dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Drew DeVault: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

At the end of the day, the machines print out eight receipts with tallies of the vote. Each copy is signed by the election board, then one is sent to city hall, one is kept by the judge of elections for at least a year, another two are given to representatives from each party, another is taped to the front door of the polling place for public inspection, and so on. However, my machines stopped before printing all of the receipts: one after 7, and one after just 5. The kicker: the only receipt which includes the full list of write-in votes is the last one, and that's the one which goes to city hall to provide (one of many) redundant sources for the vote.

The machine malfunction was unexpected and required improvisation, which is something I really did not want to do. I first called up the machine hotline (one of several numbers provided to the election board to deal with issues that arose on the day), and I was connected to an expert. They told me to reboot the machine and hit "print receipt" as many times as I needed to get the appropriate number of receipts. After I got off the phone with them, however, I discovered that this approach would not print off the write-in votes. When I tried to call back to enquire further, I got a busy tone. I expect similar problems were happening across the state; it affected both of my machines and another one in the room.

I was probably better equipped to address this than most divisions, as a computer expert by trade, but I was still skeeved out about doing anything to the machines which wasn't written down in my book. I was more skeeved out about the possibility of not counting write-in votes, however, so I decided to very carefully start pressing buttons. I guessed correctly at how to summon the administrative menu (something we had access to but were never trained on how to use), and poked around until I found some receipt printing tool that could prepare various kinds of reports. The specific report we needed to deliver to city hall was not available, but there were two reports which, together, contained the same information as the desired report. I printed this out on both machines, stapled them together, then included with them a signed note describing the undocumented process I used to obtain them. Then I went to the third machine in our room (for another division) which had the same malfunction, and repeated the process. The hardest part during this process was making sure none of the other well-meaning poll workers touched the machines — no, you there, DO NOT touch my machines, god dammit, you are not helping, fuck off! As soon as I found a button labelled "erase media", I did not want anyone else anywhere near these machines.

Actually, the police officers were the subject of another sketchy incident. The same officers arrived earlier in the day, while the polls were open, to drop off some materials. There are strict laws regulating police and poll workers while the polls are open. Police are not allowed within 100 feet of the polling location, unless they're actively voting or there on official business at the request of the election board. Additionally, anyone working at the polls in an official capacity is not allowed to wear any clothing with political messaging.

One of the officers who showed up earlier in the day was wearing a hoodie with the American flag on it, and the US armed forces oath of enlistment printed in place of the white stripes. As they were leaving, I pulled the officer aside and asked him to remove the hoodie before making his next stop, politely explaining the law. Another poll worker affirmed my instruction as legitimate. Later, after the polls closed, the same officer returned to pick up the ballots (with the same hoodie on, but now that the polls were closed it didn't matter). Apparently, when I was photographing the badges of the officers as a matter of record, he believed that I was planning to file a complaint. I didn't catch on, but another poll worker tipped me off.

On my way out of the polling location after everything was closed up, I passed the officers and stopped to clarify that I was just recording the badge number as a matter of course, and that there weren't any hard feelings over the hoodie — just trying to do my job. He was with 5 or 6 other officers at the time, and he started to puff up and make a scene. I didn't feel comfortable with the situation, so I just left, and with that, my long election day came to an end.

https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com/blob/master/content/blog/2020-Election-worker.gmi

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048271

https://portal.drewdevault.com/2020/11/10/2020-Election-worker.gmi

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://portal.drewdevault.com/2020/11/10/2020-Election-worker.gmi

https://archive.is/10BCT