The Polling Place Adventure
July 2018

By Randy Wilson
​Guest Columnist

Randy is a retired school counselor who spent his career in the San Marcos, CA, Unified School District. In "retirement," he continues to tutor students in the San Dieguito District as he pursues a new interest in writing and engages in his long-time passion, cycling. Here, he takes a wry look at the life of a poll worker. A fun change of pace for VoterBeat.

​Chapter 1

​I got the call on my cell phone. This was an omen in itself. I don’t like talking on my cell. Sometimes I can’t hear well. Other times I accidentally disconnect, and while that allows me to return to more important things, it seems—well—rude.
 
The call was from my friend Dave, who, truth be known, is a pretty good guy. Dave calls me when he wants help usually in the arena of partisan politics.
 
After disconnecting him, I called Dave back and he said, predictably enough, that he needed help. I’m thinking quickly now because in my retirement I’m actually quite busy, doing this, that, and the other. “What’s up, Dave?” I asked.
 
He told me he and his wife were going to host an election poll at their house and could I, would I, help them out? I thought quickly. I knew the election was on a Tuesday, one of three mornings I cycle with my mates, and it’s an important social and fitness happening. But I could be at his house by 2:00, so sure, I could do the late shift. Sign me up!
 
The election was a few days ago, and I did do the late shift and got home at 10:00 p.m. I’m usually in bed by 8:30 reading a mystery, but hey, stand up for democracy. The problem was that there no late shift, just a “shift,” and mine started at 5:30 in the morning. Being retired, I found this alarming, but nevertheless I soldiered on.
 
The shift, brutal though it was, was neither the beginning nor the end of my suffering. I began by contacting my poll advisor who was to connect me to “an hour” of on-line training, and only after this was successfully completed could I sign up for my “in-person” training.The on-line training is advertised as lasting “oh, about an hour.” I worked swiftly, trying desperately not to get confused, and finished in just under two. I needed, deserved, and took a nap.

​But this training was my wake-up call that poll working is complicated stuff—the set-up, the 13 hours of voting, and, worst of all, the organizing, packing up, and driving EVERYTHING to the pick-up center by 9:00 p.m., the polls having closed at 8:00. It turned out that THIS CANNOT BE DONE! This requirement is established to make you feel even less adequate than you already do after nearly fifteen straight hours at the polls.
 
With my on-line training complete and my head spinning, I scheduled my in-person training twenty miles down the coast, and on the appointed day had a delightful bike ride south. I arrived early for training along with twenty-nine other hardy souls.
 
The in-person training was as problematic as the on-line had been. All the potential complications, the varied voter scenarios, the different bags and boxes and colored locks! I felt like I was training for the FBI. At the end of two hours I got my bike, rode slowly in the sunshine, and began to feel human again in spite of the thick and detailed manual I picked up with instructions to review and study prior to D-Day.
 
The Monday before election day I joined Dave in his garage. You undoubtedly have seen many garages in their natural state so you can imagine what we had to do. We cleaned, rearranged, and assembled the voting booths. The next day, I arrived at 5:30 a.m. to finish the preparations. And then to wait for Marilyn, the Precinct Inspector, Dave’s wife and our leader, the only one of us who had ever done this polling business before. She raised the garage door at 7:00 a.m., and said loudly and clearly (I kid you not), “Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now open.” I thought it quite charming; it seemed to transport me to the late 18th century. It was my favorite part of the day, and I wish I could have yelled it out myself. But I was only a lowly assistant inspector.

Chapter 2

So I was a lowly assistant inspector, but what does that mean? Marilyn was the Precinct Inspector (note the capitals). Her husband, my friend Dave, was the Touch Screen Inspector (again the capitals). I actually began my poll life as the lowliest of the low, the vermin of the poll business. I was asked to be, and trained to be…a clerk. That’s right, a clerk, a gopher, a weasel. A nobody. And I was okay with that until I saw the pay grades. Marilyn was to make $150, Dave $125, and I would make a mere $100. Seriously? For all that time and effort? Well, I guess it was service, but what if I came out behind, you know, financially?
 
Two days after my in-person training with the rest of my mentally deranged new best friends, I received a call from the ROV. The ROV, now what the hell was the ROV? Give up? Because I did. It turned out the ROV is the Registrar of Voters, for the County of San Diego. So now we have capitals everywhere, la de da! And why in heaven would the mighty ROV be calling a lowly weasel? This was the reason:
 
To properly run and monitor a poll site there should be four workers; we were missing an assistant inspector, and apparently the entire County was short some 600 poll workers altogether. This is why Dave recruited me. The ROV representative asked if I would be willing to go through a bit more training, and I said absolutely not. I was done with training. Then I began to whine about all my responsibilities and duties in civilian life, my grandkids and so on. And I explained that I would have Marilyn and Dave train me on election day, as they were friends. This turned out to be a highly irregular suggestion; my ROV friend said he would need to talk to his superiors and would I hold, just for a minute. By that time I had seen the pay scale and said I would be happy to hold.
 
Ten minutes later he returned to his phone. They would trust me and my friends and upgrade me with no further training, but, he implied, this had better work out! I assured him it would, and began mentally calculating my new hourly wage. Not to worry, I promised, feeling a bit like Eddie Haskell. What could go wrong? I soon received a new letter which displayed my upgrade, and which now hangs in the hall along with pictures of long departed pets and relatives. And truly, what could go wrong? We would just have no clerk.

Chapter 3

​So there I was, trained as a clerk and upgraded to assistant inspector, setting records everywhere I looked, ready for election day. Except, of course, for the fact that I could barely remember any of the sordid and totally complex details I had been trained to know.
 
And finally election day dawned, just like in a Porky Pig cartoon, except of course it didn’t dawn because I had to get up at 4:30 to be at Peet’s Coffee by 5:00 and Dave’s by, as it turned out, 5:25. Assistant Inspector, now capitalized due to my pay upgrade, reporting for duty! Sir! (or Madam!)
 
Well, how did it all go? What did I learn? How much did I suffer? How interesting was it really? What was most interesting to me, given my nature, was not the process or system, but rather the voters themselves. My partners, Marilyn and Dave, were fabulous, and it was they who handled the complicated stuff, that damn touch screen and the different security measures and the varied colored bags and boxes and all the different locks, which had to secure the proper bags, OR ELSE! Remember that one, do this or don’t do that, OR ELSE? That’s how I felt. Oh, and in addition to the security locks we had the security tape as well, which had to be placed just so. OR ELSE!
 
We opened the polls as I have already told you, at 7:00 sharp, no monkey business. Honestly, by 9:30 I needed a nap. I liked my position sitting behind our long table, Marilyn sitting to my right to handle the provisional ballots (don’t ask), Dave to my left for the normal ballots. It was good symbolic positioning as well, as I had been instructed to, whenever Marilyn and Dave would start bickering, ask if anyone would like some ice tea. And I did throughout the day. And you know what? It worked.
 
I am left handed. My wife is right handed, my two kids are as well, and all five of my grandsons are too. Kind of a bummer, but oh well. I am also the only blue-eyed member of this group. The reason I mention this is that since childhood I have been very aware of handedness, and early on I realized that many of my early voters were left-handed, far more than the expected 10% found in the general population. I saw this because I was the first person in the poll they went to, and they had to provide their signature right in front of me.
 
So, having been ignored by my underhanded family, I began to embrace my voters as if they were the family I had always deserved. I notified Dave and Marilyn early on that something was afoot, and we all began to observe this handedness phenomenon, and, okay, to cheer them on a bit. “Dave, another one!” Or, to the voter himself or herself, “Hey, I see you’re left-handed.” One kind woman who clearly understood my sense of wonder as this pattern continued through early afternoon, unabated, told me with not a little pride and scorn that her entire family was left-handed; this is her extended family by the way, except for one sad schmuck who was clearly right-handed and lucky to still be considered family at all. I smiled and almost asked for her autograph. She didn’t have to explain this poetry to me!
 
I was also interested in my voter demographic. Dave and Marilyn live in a very nice area of long established neighborhoods (okay, it did burn down in the great fire of 1996), difficult for young people not living with their parents to afford, and so it played out. My guess is that our average voter, in addition to being left-handed, was between 50 and 70 years of age, and politically right leaning, though this is really just a guess as you cannot, under any circumstances, talk politics at the poll! OR ELSE! Some were kind and ready to chat, others were in a hurry, only one or two were clearly unfriendly, and many thanked us for our service. When I heard this, I smirked to myself, knowing what they apparently did not, that as Assistant Inspector I was pulling in a cool $125. Take that, suckers! And they were paying for it, though to that point I suppose I was too.
 
My favorite voters were young, brought kids and/or pets, and were chatty. This group represented 3-4% of the group, at most, but I always had my eye out. I can favor the young because I am not of their tribe; when I was up for the next family birthday several months ago, I asked five-year-old Flynie if he knew how old I was going to be. With no hesitation at all he said he did, 100 years old. Not true!
 
In no particular order then, a young couple came to vote, with the man coming right in and getting his ballot and the woman hanging way out on the sidewalk. I felt sorry for her and beckoned her in, indicating that I would deal with their dog while they voted. I provided her ballot and went around the table to take the leash. The dog stared at the woman. I walked back to the garage entrance, grabbed a chair, and sat facing the voters. The dog, with no invitation whatsoever from me, immediately jumped to my lap and continued to stare at what he could see of the woman, now somewhat shielded by the voting booth. This dog never sought my permission to jump to my lap and never once looked at me. Not once! Rude dog, I thought. Bad dog, no social skills at all. And to top it off this unconscionable beast had a pulse rate of around 2000 and sounded like a muscle car from the 1960’s. He was vibrating so much that my teeth were actually clanking together.  Finally, they all left, thank God!

​And then things got decidedly better. A single man came to us with two young boys, one nearly two, the other recently turned four. This was a definite upgrade for someone such as myself, who hadn’t owned a dog since Sophie passed and who now had five delicious grandsons. I took the boys, with permission, out to the front lawn and garden, and we began to explore. Just the three of us, while dad voted. Take your time, I thought, this is much better than sitting in that damn garage with a bunch of old folks.
 
Exploring, we found a treasure: a small mandible (jaw bone), of a very small creature but well preserved and bleached perfectly white. WOW! We discussed it, as you can with young children, decided it was a keeper, and the four- year-old ran off to daddy to see if he could keep it. This actually annoyed me as I was just about to suggest a swift rock-paper-scissors to see who actually got to take it home, but I didn’t want to make a scene in front of all those old left-handed voters. So the little thief got to keep it, and will probably lose it just as quickly.
 
Next came the pair of young teachers, not yet married but duly engaged. They were a beautiful couple, bright and energetic and lovely and everything that everyone else was not. At first I thought they had taken a wrong turn, but no, they were here to vote, and I found them on the rolls and sent them left to Dave. I was so excited that I was desperately chatty with them the entire time, and in no time at all I discovered that they worked in my old school district, and knew some of my favorite people who still worked there. Oh my God, what are the odds, except of course the school district is just over yonder hill, but still. And the girl knew a woman with whom I worked for years, we were both counselors, and when I heard this I jumped up and began to walk around the table.
 
Uh oh! I was going to give her a hug to pass on to my friend, but as I neared the end of the table I was struck by the thought of the Me Too Movement (look it up), and I thought I might be offensive if not illegal, and what if I was removed from my polling center in handcuffs? Would I still be entitled to my $125? As I approached her I asked about a hug, after all we had known each other for three or four minutes already, and she brightened up and said that, Oh yes, she loved hugs and would pass it on to our mutual friend. But it was a close shave I realized afterward. We are living in a different world.
 
And finally another couple, two girls in college, bright and spirited and excited and everything that everyone else, except for the couple from the previous paragraph, was not. These two walked into our garage surrounded by the most wonderful energy field. They were high as kites and so pleased to be with us. I had to find out what was happening here. I said to them, to get the ball rolling, “Well, how exciting, you can vote now.”
 
The one on the right was so so pleased, and responded immediately, “Yes, and we can DRINK too!” And now she was really excited!
 
Ah, a coming of age. When she mentioned drink I immediately wondered if she had brought any, and I almost asked, but then again, what about my $125 if I got caught drinking on the job? Was it worth it. Was she carrying? I smartly decided to wait, keep an eye on her, and see if she was nipping.The other girl was just finishing up her junior year at Cal Berkeley, my university, and this made me think immediately of the Cal Drinking Song, which I had learned at my dad’s knee nearly seventy years prior. Did she know it too? Might we sing it together, especially if her friend did have some hooch?
 
The two girls marched off to adjoining voting booths, and spent what seemed like hours there, often in quiet discussion. Applying make-up? Drinking to steady the nerves? We loved them because they were so diligent and methodical, and so serious. How would they be in the bars, I wondered. Safe, I hoped; these were to be life-long voters—we could just tell—and we needed them desperately.

​Conclusion

It was neither A Day at The Races, nor A Night at The Opera. It was better than either alone, or both put together. It was seventeen hours of our democracy in action. It was Marilyn in the lead with Dave close behind, and though I was bringing up the rear I was not a weasel, not a clerk. I was The Assistant Inspector. I reported for duty and I did my duty, and I will do my duty again in November for the general election. And I will be exhausted for a few days after as I was this election, and I will be proud to be an American! 

​                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        July 2018