Working the election Nov 6th

We 15 election officials at the Hartwood precinct (in the new assembly hall of the historic Hartwood Presbyterian Church) served 226 voters per hour for 13 hours (6am to 7pm). We had four laptop check-in stations in almost constant use, and one more at the help desk in frequent use for special cases. Two printers issued check-in tickets, exchanged for ballots at our single ballot table. We had 14 ballot booths, one combination scanner/ballot box, and one touch-screen/audio electronic voting machine reserved for just three visually challenged voters. All others voted with Stafford County’s usual paper scan sheet ballot. A few of us did an hour or two of setup the day before. All of us convened on election day by 5am and worked until 9pm. I took paperwork and voting machines to the courthouse after that, and was home and in bed by 10pm. Most of the results below appeared on the website of the state board of elections next morning, although it took a week for the provisional ballot results to appear there. [On November 15th, I inserted below a chart from Google showing national results.] At our precinct eight provisional ballots were collected — none of our voters had to use the specially designated provisional ballots for voters unable to present identification on election day. (Eligibility of provisional voters is evaluated by the electoral board in the days after the election in order to determine whether or not to count their ballots at that point.) We had to replace about 40 spoiled ballots for voters who accidentally voted for more than one choice within a given race. About fifteen handicapped or elderly people were able to vote curbside from their cars — I did five together at one point. Several came early, in front of a hundred others standing in line, but none came in the last few hours at the end of the day. There was no line when we closed the doors at 7pm, at which point there was only one voter left in the room.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.