Arrived at my precinct before 6am to work as a Voter Information Specialist VIS (lead up is detailed here). Set-up went very smoothly, and polls were opened at exactly 7am. We had voters lined up at 6am so the line was somewhat long from 7am till around 9am. There was a single Democratic poll watcher at our location.
A quick moment of apprehension when the first person to cast a ballot had it rejected by the machine, tried it another way, rejected again, but third time was a charm, and we're off and running! No more issues with the Accu-Vote OS machine for the rest of the day.
As a VIS I helped process any change of address issues or voter eligibility questions. The majority of change of address issues were related to: 1. Voters hold onto a voter ID card from many years ago which listed an incorrect precinct 2. They automatically went to this location since this is where they voted last general election (which was not always correct). Any voter who was registered in another precinct was provided all the information they needed to get to the proper precinct.
Another process we dealt with was voters who had been issued an absentee ballot and either surrendered it at the polls (and were issued a new ballot you can't vote with an absentee ballot at your precinct on election day) or did not send in they're absentee. In either case a voter is required to sign an affidavit stating that they did not vote via absentee and are only voting at this precinct.
One new twist to this election was the provisional ballot. If for some reason a voter's eligibility could not be verified or they disputed their eligibilty a provisional ballot would be issued. We issued a total of six provisional ballots.
Some of the provisionals could be valid, but many were voters who we showed as being registered to vote in another county, but they insisted they were to vote in our precinct. We collect all the data, allow them to submit a ballot, which is turned over to the local canvassing board for review. The provisional voter is provided information on how they could follow-up with the SOE to check on the status of their vote.
As I said traffic was high from 7am till 9am then a steady flow till around 3:30pm when we had a spike, with another spike around 5:30pm. Around 6:45 things slowed down with voters trickling in right up till 7pm.
The only real excitement came around 6:30pm. A woman was helping her father vote. We instructed her that if she needed to help her father we would need to fill out an authorization form. (Just as a quick background, some voters are shown in the voting book as needing assistance, and it lists an authorized person to assist them. If you arrive at the polls and are not pre-registered for assistance, you can fill out a form to assign somebody to assist you) She refused. We asked again, She refused and began to argue. Luckily for us there was an off-duty officer voting next to her. He identified himself as an officer and asked her to lower her voice, she argued with him (not really a good idea). At that point I had to attend to another issue with a voter so I don't know how the issue was resolved, but it did draw the attention of just about everybody in the polling location.
One funny story. A man who was voting for the first time he voted left the precinct and then returned and asked where the exit polling representative was. He thought that the media had exit polling at all locations.
Closing down went by the book, data was transmitted to the SOE office on the first try. Our precinct had approx 3400 registered voters. Approx 1700 voted at the polls today and approx 200 had pre-voted so a total turnout of around 1900, 56% turnout. We post a tally generated by the Accu-Vote machine outside the door of the polling location. We were on the road to Bartow by 7:45pm
I was required to accompany the precinct clerk to Bartow to drop off all our ballots and gear. We pulled up and handed everything off to a deputy and a election staff worker.
Home by 9:20pm.
Overall it was a great experience, and I plan on doing it again. It was exciting to see a number of people voting for the first time, and were thrilled with the process. At other times it would be frustrating, when you would have a voter arrive and say rather clearly. "I am registered and live in X county, but work here, can I vote here?" Some understood this issue, other would become upset.
DISCLAIMER: I was a poll worker for the Polk Supervisor of Elections and am in no way a spokesperson or representative for the Polk SOE.
