Back in 2004 when John Kerry mounted his horrendous campaign for the presidency, I wanted to do my part. I'm an attorney, so I thought I could lend a hand, maybe in Ohio or Pennsylvania. But I couldn't get my act together in time to make that happen. Then I heard someone on the radio mentioning that a lot of places needed poll workers, so I called my local board of elections to volunteer. Only they told me I couldn't volunteer...they would pay me. Score! I've been doing it pretty much ever since, with the exception of the occasional primary election. This was my first one. Unlike in years past, where people voted by the election district (basically a selected geographic area) in which they lived, this time the board of elections decided to combine the districts but separate the voters by what party they were registered with. Democrats here, Republicans there. An interesting concept, but it messed with people who were used to the way things use to work. And people apparently don't read well (Democrat or Republican), because we kept getting Democrats coming to our table to vote, and vice versa at the Democrats table, not to mention the independent voters who ignored the sign that said only registered Democrats and Republicans could vote.
Being a poll worker isn't a gig for the lazy. We work from 5:30am until 9:00pm. For $150 (from which no taxes are withheld). Don't ask me how most poll workers do it, what with the apparent average age being about 80 (my unscientific estimate), but they do it.
The polling place where I was working was in the elementary school that my kids attend. I was stationed at the Republican voting table. In order to ensure no funny business, there are 2 Republicans and 2 Democrats stationed there. We had about 1,050 registered Republicans and one voting machine, compared to the 1,200+ registered Democrats with 2 machines at the other station.
Things started out slow. At least for us. Not much action in the early morning hours. A few folks on their way to work, probably getting their vote cast before they hit the train to Manhattan. Some of the elementary school students started arriving around 8am, apparently for string ensemble rehearsal. Regular classes begin around 8:30am. My wife stopped in with my kids to say hi before she dropped them off for the school day.
After the students were let in it was time for the pledge of allegiance over the loudspeaker system, followed by a quick salute for Black History Month, which was inappropriate, I thought, for its content - they were paying tribute to Barack Obama. The announcement was clearly heard in the voting booths. I seriously doubt it swayed the vote of anyone who came to vote, but I think better judgment would have been to discuss Obama the day before or after the election.
The morning plodded along, at least for us. We averaged about 8 voters per hour. Around noon the Democrats had 160 voters to our 40. An interesting statistic that the group of us working the table tried to figure out, throwing out our myriad theories. McCain is not inspiring; McCain has New York locked up so people probably figured their vote wouldn't make a difference; Nobody likes any of the Republican candidates; the Democrats have more interesting candidates; Democrats are more likely to vote because they want to take part in the historic event of voting for either the first strong female candidate or the first black presidential candidate; Obama is inspiring. Who the hell really knows? It's all a bunch of speculation.
I went home for lunch and to see if there were any updates on any of the races, even though I knew it was too early for there to be anything of significance to report...and I was right. The New York Giants parade was going on in Manhattan, and that was the big news of the day thus far. After a quick trip to Best Buy, it was "back to school" to wait out the day until dinnertime.
Still averaging about 8 voters per hour in the afternoon. Not much of anything exciting happening, though I did kill some time trying to guess the party affiliation of each person who came through the door...with a fair amount of success.
I do have to say that it was interesting seeing how many people came in not knowing that they could only vote if they were registered with either the Democratic or Republican party, and that they could only vote for candidates in their party. We got a lot of people who were registered but not affiliated with any party, some of whom swore that they were registered with a party. And a bunch who wanted to vote Democratic who were registered Republican. Not many Democrats who wanted to vote Republican interestingly enough. And we had a few people who, not realizing that they were registered Republican, decided that they didn’t want to vote for a Republican candidate. We ran out of registration cards giving them out to people who wanted to either switch parties or who wanted to actually affiliate themselves with one party or the other (again, mostly Democrats).
Back from dinner. Two hours to go and we're up in the 170's. Things have picked up since about 3pm. Lots of couples coming in. Older men and women too, walking with canes and walkers, whatever it takes to get their vote in. I had to admire that. One older woman was so determined to vote, even though she had to pause and take a seat half way across the gymnasium because she couldn't otherwise make it to the voting booth.
At the end of the night, turnout was about 30% combining together both Democratic and Republican turnout. But that hides a serious discrepancy. Republican turnout was about 19%, while Democratic turnout was 42%. A drastic difference. And, in my very small snapshot of the electorate, Barack Obama eked out a close victory over Hilary Clinton, while John McCain took about half of the Republican vote. Rudy Giuliani, out of the race, took 3% of the vote, and Mitt Romney took 33%. Don't extrapolate anything from this, because as I'm writing this, CBS is predicting Clinton to win New York.
And now, off to bed.
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