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The value of mail-in voting [1]
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Date: 2022-12-09
Photo: Tiffany Tertipes.
I feel my ire rise anytime someone challenges mail-in voting. Every person who is against mail-in voting should work as an Election Judge a couple of times, and fully understand the voting procedures.
First of all, the procedures are set at the county or parish level, in accordance with the state elections laws. It may come as a surprise that the states of Nevada and New York are the only two states where no State-provided voter training is provided. They may—“may”—provide digests, handbooks or compilation of election laws. Sort of like working without a job description. There are very precise rules about how to process ballots.
Some states offer voluntary training for local election officials, or on the statewide voter registration system. Those states include Alabama, California, Florida[1], Idaho, Louisiana[2], Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming. Others states hire, train and pay local officials. In these states, election workers are not volunteers. They are paid an hourly rate for election day. But, they are also paid for attending training sessions. Those with asterisks have implemented mandatory training for poll workers.
Arizona*
Arkansas
Colorado*
Connecticut*
Georgia*
Hawaii
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa*
Kansas
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan*
Minnesota*
Mississippi*
Montana*
Nebraska
New Mexico
North Carolina*
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Ohio
Oregon
Rhode Island
South Carolina*
Tennessee [3]
Vermont
Virginia*
Washington*
Wisconsin*
West Virginia
The Big Bucks
I have worked as an Elections Judge in one of these states, without even realizing I was going to be paid. I thought I was volunteering. But, I was paid for attending two training sessions, in addition to a 14-hour Election Day.
We were required to attend paid trainings. The first was a large two-hour group session for everyone who been hired to work Election Day, at polling places. We learned to set up the voting machines we would be used.
We learned about provisional voting, ensuring that everyone got a chance to vote even if they were at the wrong voting place. The goal was to make sure everyone’s right to vote was protected. A provisional voter was a person who was not properly registered in the precinct where they wanted to vote, but had a reason for voting there instead of elsewhere. Usually, it was someone who had recently moved, and could prove that.
Their vote was cast, with as much information as possible, but it was not put in the ballot box, with the rest of the votes. Each and every provisional vote was placed in a separate envelope and sealed, only to be unsealed at the Elections Commission office where the vote would be scrutinized before being added to the vote tally, or being cast aside. The goal was always to protect every vote, while identifying those that could be a case of someone attempting to vote more than once, and so on.
The second training was a brief session at our respective polling places, to familiarize ourselves with the space—like locating the restrooms!—and to do preliminary setup for voting machines. Someone from the Elections Commission, with security clearance, would arrive before the polls opened the following morning, to attach and activate the machines. Some of those individuals were also hired just for Election Day.
At that time, we were still using paper records to confirm whether a potential voter was in the correct polling place and, if they were not, we could either issue a provisional ballot or direct them to the correct polling place. Since then, that process has been automated using a laptop that contains the voter database: just the names and addresses of registered voters, by precinct. No, you can’t use TikTok while you are working the polls.
On election day, everyone who was going to work that day had to be present, at their assigned polling place, before the doors opened. That meant 5 a.m., bright-eyed and ready to do the last-minute tasks required before the doors would be unlocked and voters allowed inside.
Poll Watchers would confirm that the ballot box was empty. There is a specific check list of tasks to be done.
The poll workers had committed as group, during training, that we were aware we would be working a solid 14-hour day, and we would not be allowed to leave early. That way, the same very small group of people were present all day. We were sworn in, as a group, to abide by the election laws. It was assumed that we knew and understood how to apply those laws, after going through training.
The pay was $155 ($11.07/hour) for working on Election Day, or $10/hour during early voting, when polling places were open shorter and more irregular hours, depending on the location. Some larger cities now pay $200 for the day.
So Who Works as Election Judges
You might think people would clamor to pick up an extra $155 (or whatever a state pays). No. They don’t.
That’s not big bucks when you consider that Election Day, which can be quite hectic before and after people go to work, is a 14-hour workday. It’s a very long day and it can be stressful.
You cannot leave for lunch. You have to bring your own lunch. Only voters are allowed inside the polling place so you can’t order out or have someone bring you lunch, and snacks.
You cannot leave the polling place for any reason, even to step outside to vape or talk to your friends. During the busiest of times, you may have to postpone a bathroom break.
Some people think of Election Judge pay kind of like a Christmas bonus, especially the elderly on small Medicare pensions. I was surprised, when I arrived at the first training session, to find that I was almost the only trainee who did not have white hair (at the time).
There were no young people. None. There is a constant appeal for younger people, and even high-school and college students are encouraged to apply. But, young people just were not present.
I was working full-time when I first volunteered. As I said, I assumed I was volunteering. I heard the plea for Election Judges and I applied, and used a vacation day from work to serve. The trainings were scheduled for evenings, apparently with the intention of accommodating people who worked.
Does it matter?
Yes. Absolutely, it matters. During training, everyone in this very large auditorium met with the group of people we would be working with, at our assigned polling place. I have a master’s degree in Education and I declare that the trainers were excellent. The training materials were very well done.
I was a little mystified that my fellow poll workers did not seem to be following along, as a trainer focused on the more detailed instructions like how to process a Provisional Ballot. That matters a lot. Those ballots are used for those votes that are already in question. Understanding when to identify a questionable vote matters, as does knowing when a vote looks questionable but might not be.
Election Judges have to make those frontline decisions about whether a vote is cast. It is especially important when the polling place is crowded and voters are impatient. Poll workers are there to ensure the right to vote, and to question a potential illegal vote.
I assumed that my fellow poll workers seemed not to pay attention, to the training, because they had worked the polls before and knew the rules. I trusted the Process.
Election Day
I was so enthused when Election Day arrived. It was all new and so interesting to be an actual part of the process, beyond casting a ballot.
We were sworn in to protect the vote, basically. One person had been designated as our captain, if you will. That person assigned each of us to a specific post, within the polling place. The law, in that particular state, dictates that, at the end of the day, one Republican and one Democrat must deliver the votes to the Elections Commission, where votes are literally counted, after polls close. So, at least one Republican and one Democrat has to drive the election materials to the Elections Commission office, together.
So at least one of them has to have a car. You don’t really want them to haul elections materials on a bus or in a taxi do you?
Throughout the day, parties matter. Step one, in this particular voting district, there had to be one Republican and one Democrat at every step of the way, in the voting process, to approve or challenge your right to vote. The process was so meticulous that it amazes me still that anyone would question the process.
When voters arrive, they have to verbally give their name. No offense to anyone, but you need poll workers with good hearing. It isn’t an age issue. It is a simple hearing issue.
I and my assigned co-worker had the task of looking up each person in a book of registered voters. We had the first half of the alphabet; two more co-workers had the rest of the alphabet. We were responsible for either looking up each person, or asking them to move on down the line to the two poll workers who had the book containing their voter registration.
It was frustrating and, if anyone should challenge in-person voting, I challenge you to work as a poll worker and see what happens behind the scenes. At first, the very elderly man I was partnered with could not hear when people said their names.
The law says voters have to speak their name, unless they are disabled. They are not allowed to show a driver’s license or even a voter’s registration card. They have to say their name, aloud.
My partner could not hear them. I had to repeat most people’s names for him, or someone else did. I was willing and able to do it. It frustrated voters far more than it did me.
To make matters worse, he either had serious vision problems or simply could not read. He was born in the United States and was a native English speaker. Yet, when a potential voter said their name, he was incapable of knowing how to spell it. We shared one book of voter registration records and I was the only person who looked up every single name. If someone said their name was “Brown,” he would flip through the entire book and then do it again, until I rescued him, while the potential voter stared in disbelief.
He should have been able to do that. The law says, “Be able to speak, read, and write the English language.” But, no one tests applicants—and it doesn’t say they should be able to hear. Surely someone filled out his application to serve as a poll worker was completed by someone else.
I won’t say our parties. It doesn’t matter.
But we were being paid to each sign a confirmation that each voter was registered to vote, indicating that a Republican and Democrat had heard a voter’s name and found their voter’s registration. We signed, on behalf of our party affiliation, that a fair decision had been made declaring that a voter was a legitimately registered voter who was voting in the correct precinct.
The voter doesn’t sign anything. They were not allowed to look up their own name in the registration rolls. Poll workers found a name and we both initialed that page. I could have flipped to any name in the book and my co-poll worker would have initialed approval for that voter.
Sooner or later, that would have triggered an investigation (a provisional ballot), when the actual voter showed up. But, if they had never showed up, I could have authorized the person standing there as a registered voter and my co-worker would never have known.
I still ponder whether my co-worker was incapable of reading. A couple of decades earlier, he had retired from a lifelong career as a fireman. Apparently they never let him drive the fire truck.
As I mentioned, the election materials have to be returned to the Election Commission, as soon as possible after the polls close. The media—oh, and voters—are waiting eagerly for the counting to being. That’s right.
Poll workers don’t count the votes. Nope. We don’t.
The voting machines, or ballots, are sealed until two poll workers from every polling place hand-deliver them to the Election Commission, where OTHER people count them. The counting cannot begin until poll workers deliver the votes.
It is chaos. Long lines of cars, each with a Republican and a Democrat, delivering the actual votes. Poll workers are tired. Runners frantically rush the election materials inside so the counting can begin.
I was not happy. It seemed that everyone else had secretly decided that, since I was the “young” one in the group, I should be elected as the representative for my party. We had all just worked 14 hours. Not to be petty, but I had just worked for both myself and my co-worker. Plus, I had to be at work at 8 am the next day. Everyone else was retired.
Now, I had to deliver the votes. The poll worker assigned to accompany me was the elderly man I had been partnered with all day. His wife had worked the same polling place with us, but she insisted she could not possible accompany me because she was planning to have her carpets shampooed the next day, which she called “working.” She also drove their car home afterward, so I had to give him a ride to his home, which was a bit out of my way.
I did not give my co-worker a literacy exam, and I was not sure whether his vision or his illiteracy was his issue. Was he just lazy? Was he confused by the crowd? I didn’t want to point figures at a co-worker with a roomful of voters.
Afterward, we were asked to submit a survey about our experience. I did point out that applicants’ reading ability needs to be somehow tested. My co-worker really was incapable of carrying out his duties. We were in the throes of Election Day and I am an honest person. Regardless of party affiliation, I took my task seriously.
My partner was confused when we could not find potential voters’ name in the registration book. As I had suspected when, during training, we were taught when and how to allow someone to file a provisional vote, he wasn’t paying attention. There were potential voters who were not registered, and I did refer them to the pair of poll workers assigned to processing provisional votes. Otherwise, he would have simply told them they couldn’t vote.
I remembered my poll partner not following along when our trainer taught us how to file those provisional votes. I distinctly remembered him talking, making it difficult to listen, at times. I am convinced to this day that he was not paying attention, during training, because he could not read the instructions. Had I not been doing his job for him, he would have denied people the right to vote.
Transportation
I sigh, aloud, every single election, when enthusiastic volunteers beg for transportation for others to the polls. Over. And over. I realize it can be a challenge for the disabled, the elderly, and people who don’t have private transportation to voting places that are not located on public transportation routes.
So much effort goes into getting people to polling places in person. Many years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter, a volunteer told me so very proudly that she didn’t influence elections. She went on to tell me that when she drove a van to transport people to polling places, they often said they still hadn’t made a decision. She shared that she always told them how she voted. In her mind, that was not influence. She was just sharing her personal experience. She was wrong.
Has there ever been a non-partisan free transportation to the polls?
Technology in the polling place
The last time I worked as an Election Judge, they introduced laptops to replace those voter registration books. That was disastrous. As an experienced Election Judge, I was assigned to process Provisional Ballots. And, maybe someone realized I paid attention during training.
I was disappointed. I’m a fast typist and a certified Microsoft Office Specialist. I was sure I would be assigned to looking up registered voters on the laptop. Nope. I was assigned to the Provisional Ballots, and anything out of the ordinary.
Again, I believe every single person working that polling place was on Medicare. They were only working because they wanted the money. I never heard any conversation about how vital voting is. It was just about the $155. It was kind of sad.
None of my co-workers could actually type and they all seemed intimidated by using the laptop. But, hunt-and-peck was better than expecting workers, like my aforementioned co-worker, to determine whether to tell a potential voter to leave, or to complete a Provision Ballot.
In my experience, adding the laptop was more of a hindrance. I don’t believe that will continue to be. As a computer trainer, I realized well over a decade ago that so many people, of all ages, use a computer now that training was dead. In fact, I was working for a private computer training company until we realized that classes became smaller and smaller, and no one under 30 showed up except for maybe Crystal Reports. It wasn’t long before the company, and all four cities where we operated, failed.
But the people applying to work as poll workers were older, with no zero computer experience. They weren’t even your run of the mill hunt-and-peck end user. They couldn’t find the letters on the keyboard. The poll place supervisor and other poll workers sometimes had to stop what they were doing just to type in a name, to confirm that a potential voter was in the right polling place and registered to vote.
Mail-In Voting
Years ago, I thought you had a have a doctor’s note to vote by mail. The moment I discovered that I no longer had to get to a polling place and wait in line, I stopped voting in person.
I am a huge proponent of mail-in voting and early walk-in computer voting. I do trust computers. I have been involved with technology for years, and am a former network administrator. I have always been aware of how critical cyber-security is. I still advocate for digital voting.
Where I currently live, I have the option of mailing in my vote. Or, I could drop it off in person at the Elections Commission office, except I don’t have a vehicle.
When I vote, I can (and do) request that my ballot be tracked. The ballot envelope has a place where I write in my email or my phone number and sign that the Election Commission has permission to track my ballot and keep me posted—or to let me know if there is a problem with the ballot.
I receive an alert when my ballots are received by the Election Commission, all the way through until my ballot has been counted. Do you know when your ballot has actually been counted?
Remember, in the walk-in voting process, my co-poll worker would have refused to let people vote, had I not stepped in and helped those potential voters complete a Provisional Ballot. It was our responsibility to be on our toes: to know the law and apply it. My opinion is that my co-worker wasn’t up to the task. I do trust that the staff at the Election Commission, who actually count the votes, do a much better job. I’d much rather see more mail-in ballots and more mid-night ballot counters, and less in-person voting.
Better Informed Voting
I confess that, over the years, there has been a time or two that I, too, have cast an uninformed vote. I arrived at the polls, in person, without even realizing I hadn’t researched the down-ballot candidates, for instance.
One thing that is banned from in-person voting is that voters are not allowed to bring any materials into the voting place. That includes notes on, even your own handwritten notes, about who to cast your ballot for.
If you vote via mail-in ballot, you can take your time and research candidates you don’t know enough about—or don’t know anything about. How much do you know about your local school board candidate? Where do they stand on textbooks? Have you checked? It matters!
Money
According to the National Conference State Legislatures, reports that, “Funding for elections can come from multiple levels of government: federal, state, local and smaller political subdivisions.” [4]
No one knows how much it costs to run elections in the United States. Hubler and Underhill
Hubler and Underhill report, “For that matter, it’s a rare state that knows how much election administration costs within its own borders due to the complexity of elections and the involvement of several levels of government.” Their report is several years old now. Apparently, we still don’t know. But that doesn’t mean I will stop looking.
At present, it remains unclear how much rent the Election Commission pays, for training space and polling places, for permission and access for the day. The Election Commission pays rent for training facilities, often in churches. So, that is another cost. One city that did report its expenditure for polling places, for one year, spent $18,000. That city was part of a township consisting of 92 districts. If those numbers are accurate and consistent, that township spent $1.665 million on renting polling places so voters could vote in person. One time. Can that possibly be correct? No one seems to know.
In my county alone, the cost for poll workers like I’ve described, not counting Election Commission employees and poll workers who are assigned to early voting polling places, are paid about $60,760. For one county, for one Election Day. That doesn’t include tech support and the Election Commission staff. Or rent. Or the cost of printing ballots. The list goes on.
As I have also mentioned, I was working with a poll worker who was essentially incompetent. His incompetence might not have been age, but certainly was an issue regardless of the source of the issue.
We need to realize that the vast majority of poll workers are just regular people. Literally, voting is handled by the people and for the people.
We seem to think there are truly non-partisan souls working the polls. They are not. In my example—in my county—half of the poll workers are Republican and half are Democrat, by law. Not just two different parties, at each polling station within a polling place, but specifically only Republican and Democrat. Your vote is never handled, at the polling place, by anyone of any other party.
Because of the way the law is written, no one can work at the polls unless they are Republican or Democrat. If you are Green Party, Independent, etc., you cannot serve as a poll worker. I actually changed my party affiliation in order to work as a poll worker. It had no immediately impact on my voting, aside from having to make sure I was not given a party-affiliated ballot. But, that’s for another conversation.
Perhaps that law should be changed. Perhaps, as long as a person is a registered voter, they should be allowed to work as a poll worker. Perhaps it would be easier to find enough poll workers.
The Future
For one thing, perhaps we should save some money on all those polling districts and devote it to cyber-security. We could be more inclusive, than restricting. It is discouraging to be excluded from the process.
We need to save the gasoline and effort it takes to transport so many people to the polling place. We can stop complaining about the lines. Voters wouldn’t have to worry about the discomforts of waiting in line.
Mull it over. What do you think?
[1] Florida. Accessed Dec. 9, 2022.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-costs.aspx#_ftn2 [2] Louisiana. Accessed Dec. 9, 2022.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-costs.aspx#_ftn3 [3] Tennessee. Accessed Dec. 9, 2022.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-costs.aspx#_ftnref1 [4] “Election Costs: Who Pays and With Which Funds?” Katy Owens Hubler and Wendy Underhill. National Conference of State Legislatures, 2018. Accessed Dec. 9, 2022.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-costs-who-pays-and-with-which-funds.aspx
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