Grandpa, What Did You Do In The Revolution?

I'm just now getting around to this. Old age makes me slow? Or am I just too busy with busy work?

Tuesday I spent the day -- 5:30 AM to 8:30 PM -- at Precinct 4-B in Barberton. I was one of the (R) precinct judges, and my specific job, as assigned after I arrived, was poll judge. I recorded the ballot stub numbers as the voters were given their ballots.

In all, our group functioned quite well. The lady who was presiding judge seemed to be a bit unhappy with me at times, probably because when people came to the table and had a question, they tended to ask me instead of her. She may have taken that as a slight due to her gender, I don't know. She was a bit testy at times, especially when I asked for clarification of some of the procedures that were followed.

ID was generally supplied very willingly by the voters. We did have some moments of uncertainty, though. Active duty military IDs were supposed to be accepted, even though they do not contain the bearer's address. Otherwise, government issued IDs needed to have both the bearer's name and home address. We ended up accepting some VA ID cards, which also lack the address, in lieu of a driver's license, as a substitute for an active duty military ID. I questioned this, because I thought the instructions from the Ohio Secretary of State were quite clear that any other form of government ID than a military ID must also have the current home address. The presiding judge felt that a VA ID was the same as a military ID.

Roughly 4% of the ballots cast in our precinct were provisional : they were a result of the voter not having acceptable ID. In such cases the voter has 10 days to contact the Board of Elections and provide the proper ID. If he doesn't do that, his vote is not counted. Our precinct had, I believe, a higher percentage of provisional ballots than the adjacent precinct table (6-C). To some extent I attribute that to the fact that as the presiding judge called out the voter's name, I would respond with reading the address from the poll book. Quite a few of the voters would quickly say something like, "I moved since the last election." At that point, the ID check would tighten.

Any voter who had moved out of the precinct but still insisted on voting a provisional ballot had to be informed that the Board would not count a provisional ballot cast in the wrong precinct. We had voters who had moved out of the county trying to vote in Barberton 4-B because they said they had not registered in their new home precinct. They were informed that they could vote provisionally, but that their ballot would not be counted when the Board found out they had voted in the wrong place. Some wanted to know what difference it made, since they only wanted to vote for President. They had to be told that each precinct had different issues on the ballot; the ballots were specific for the precinct (and, in fact, there are some precincts that have different ballots depending on what the street address is!).

The ballot scanners did not jam (even though the AutoMark machine did have a paper jamb while our only disabled voter to use it was part-way through his first ballot page). We ended up with a different number of ballots in our scanner ballot can because we know of at least two voters who ran ballots from 6-C through the scanner for 4-B. The scanner is supposed to be programmed to reject ballots from the wrong precinct. That feature appears to have not been working that day. In fact, the scanner is supposed to reject a ballot unless the ballot stubs have been removed (would you want somebody to have a record of how you voted?). We had an odd number of ballots, which was a puzzle until I found a set (pages 1 and 2, clinging tightly together) that had gone through the scanner with the stubs still attached. Seems that another feature of the scanner also failed to work.

There were 951 voters registered in 4-B. 71 of them had been sent absentee ballots (which they may or may not have returned to the Board). We had 413 voters, counting the 18 provisional ballots cast. Bottom line : fewer than half the registered voters in Barberton 4-B actually voted.

I was very happy to head for home afterward.