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Community Corner

True Story: I Was an Election Official

Patch's columnist worked the polls on Super Tuesday.

This past Election Day, I awoke at 3:45 a.m. to prepare for my first stint as an election official. Showered, shaved, brushed the teeth, composed some poetry to my still-asleep wife and arrived at my polling station 5:00 a.m. Yep, that’s FIVE in the freaking morning. 

We had to get there that early because the polls open at 6 a.m. and our task was to make sure that all of the ballot machines were in proper order, all the signs explaining the voting process were taped to the cinder block walls, and parking slots were made available. We took our oath and performed various other tasks. This process is very serious stuff and our tasks were in big booklets with pages of instructions from the state and county. Then, promptly at 6, our election chief went outside and yelled “the polls are now open!”  It was completely dark and not one person was waiting in line, so his pronouncement just echoed through the empty parking lot. But, we were ready! 

I had brought piles and piles of food, enough to last me until 9 that night which was when we estimated we’d be shutting down. The food was necessary because election officials are not allowed to leave the polling station. Not once.  I couldn’t sneak down to the 7-11 for a cup of coffee or bring my car in for a quick inspection. Nope, unless you had to go to the little boys' room, you were stuck in our room from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. And all for a $100 paycheck!    

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As we all know by now, . There were only two Republican candidates on the ballot, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.  Write-ins were prohibited, much to the disappointment of supporters of the perennial write-in winner: Donald Duck. Nope, folks came in, went straight to the booth and were done a minute later.   

Now, I’m a Democrat, so it was rather interesting to be surrounded by Republicans the whole day. It was interesting to hear the chatter about the lack of choices on the ballot, complaints about why every election sign had to be also written in Spanish as well, a lot of talk about the NASCAR season and how voters should be allowed to bring their guns into the voting both for protection.        

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But election officials are prohibited from talking about politics, so I spent most of the day chatting with folks about The Hunger Games, the start of the baseball season and how Springsteen was coming to town in a few months.  Still, I want to commend those Republicans who did take the time to come out and vote in a somewhat dull election. Indeed, I’d like to take a minute to focus on one of them.

David Nolan has been the Republican chairman for the Riverside precinct for as long as I can remember. We disagree on everything, including The Hunger Games, baseball and Springsteen. But, over all of these years, we have had some good, educational and civil conversations where we tossed out the bumper stickers and listened to each other. I know, it almost sounds un-American, doesn’t it?  And while I disagree with David, I have to give him kudos because he is out there every year, working for his party and his candidates.  And he doesn’t stand there accosting voters as they enter the polling place like some people do. He just politely asks them if they would like a Republican ballot.  He epitomizes what is right about our democratic process.  Sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses.  Either way, he does it with civility, he doesn’t try to scream you down and he handles his job with class. 

I tip my hat to David Nolan (even though he is wrong about everything!). 

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