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10/24/2004: "Me, official election inspector."
This election day, I will be working for the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan, as an election inspector. Whatever I may write here, while there, I will act in a non partisan manner. To me, nothing is more holy than the sanctity of the electoral process.
It's been a while (November, 1996) since I chaired a precinct for them. This time I will be co chair of a quiet, Northwest Ann Arbor precinct. To the extent that Ann Arbor has Republican precincts, this is a Republican precinct.
As a precinct chair, I always had four goals.
- Most important was to run a clean election.
- Second, to be able to prove that we ran a clean election.
- Third, get voters in and out quickly.
- Fourth, get election workers in and out quickly.
Back in the days of mechanical machines, we got voters in and out quickly by making sure they knew what to do before they hit the machines. We got election workers out quickly after the polls closed by assigning responsibilities and previewing tasks to be completed with an hour to go. We dotted every "i", crossed every "t", and still were one of the first precincts to complete all tasks.
Things changed with optical scan ballots. With mechanical machines, only so many voters could vote at once; it was expensive to add room for another voter to fill out a ballot, that would require another expensive machine.
With optical scan Optech machines, it is easy to add more sites for voters to fill out ballots. And once they are filled out, it is fast for voters to place their ballots in the machines.
The long lines are gone. As one who kinda dislikes casual voters, that makes me a bit sad. I'd rather restrict voting to those that are motivated to research the issues and vote based on that research. Also, the new machines remove much of the challenge of streamiling a precinct's operation.
