Election Thoughts After Four Hours As a Poll Worker In A Unique Election [Updated]

 It's election day in Alaska and I had a four hour shift - from 10:30am- 2:30pm - today at a local polling place.  Below are things that struck me about today.  But first an explanation of this unusual election

As a preface to non-Alaskan readers, this was a particularly unusual election. 

1. There were two different elections happening at the same time
1. There's a special general election to replace US Rep Don Young who died in office.  There was already a primary election earlier.  Today's winner will finish Don Young's seat which ends in January 3, 2023 and when new Representatives are sworn in.
2. There's a regular primary election for the November general election. 
2. Alaska is changing from regular party primaries to open primaries and then ranked choice voting in the general.  So the top four candidates go to the general election.  At the general election, voters can rank the candidates from one to four.  When your choice candidate is eliminated, your second choice vote is counted. This goes on until one candidate has more than 50%. 
3. So, the special general election today to replace Don Young is ranked choice.  The primary election today, voters only pick one candidate for each office.  Confused yet?  It's not that hard, but it's hard to describe it clearly.  

Turnout Seems High  [UPDATE August 17, 2022: The unofficial primary results for Senate seats show a wide variation in turnout from district to district.  Some in the teens others in the thirties.  But absentee ballots and mail-in ballots would seem to still be out. Where I worked today had 30% as of the latest results]

There were 100 votes when I got there (2.5 hours after the polls opened) and 260 votes when I left at 2:30.  

The person who organized this group of poll workers sent out emails about how primaries and special elections tended to be slow and that we should bring something to read or otherwise occupy our time.  

So, in my four hour shift, 160 people voted.  If I'm calculating right, that comes to one vote every 90 seconds.  

So, is that a lot?  There are 1800 on the register for that polling place.  So by 2:30pm 14% of the voters in that precinct had voted.  We've had municipal elections with 20% of voters voting.  And there were 5.5 hours left for people to vote, and the after work hours tend to be the busiest.    

Also, there were some disabled voters, whose votes do not go in the voting machine so they aren't in my tally.  Also there were some questioned ballots that aren't in my tally. (People who weren't on the voting list for this precinct, didn't have ID, etc.)  

And, of course, a lot of people voted early or by mail.  So based on the precinct I worked at, voter  turnout is pretty strong.  

A friend working another polling place says they had 600 votes by 3:30pm.  

The Voting Machine

My job was helping people get their ballots into the voting machine.  It's a Dominion machine.  The company that sued Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell for defamation and is also suing Fox News.  That suit was allowed to proceed recently.   The instructions are to pull the ballot out of the privacy sleeve a little bit and then push the ballot into the slot.  But most people were having trouble with that.  The ballot wasn't catching enough, or maybe they were squeezing the privacy sleeve which kept the ballot for pulling out.  So I started telling people to pull it out about four inches.  That really wasn't much better. 

Finally I told people I would stand way back so I couldn't see their ballot and they could then pull the ballot out of the privacy sleeve altogether and put it in the slot.  That worked easily at least 90% of the time.  

Once the ballot goes in, you have to check the little screen on the machine.  If all is good, a message flashes saying it was successful and there's a check mark.  But that's up for maybe 3 seconds and then it's ready for the next ballot.  If you aren't looking for it, it's easy to miss. 

But if there is a problem, the screen tells you, very specifically.  Things like voting for two candidates instead of just one.  Or on the ranked choice part, that people marked more than one candidate the same ranking.  Or that they put in two write-in candidates.  Then you have a choice of pushing a button to cast the ballot anyway, or to return the ballot.  Then they can tear up that ballot - and turn it in to be saved in a special envelop, and they can have another ballot.  But they can only do that twice.  Most of the time the ballot was successful.  

Other than the ballots being tricky to insert into the machine while in the privacy sleeve, the machine worked well.  

Civility 

All but one voter were polite, friendly even.  Most thanked me for volunteering*.  No one objected to my suggestion that I would stand way back and then to take the ballot out of the privacy sleeve.  They listened and nodded politely and did it.  

There was one exception.  And this lady wasn't rude to me, but she shared her opinion in an angry tone (but again, clearly not aimed at me) and said, "This election is totally fucked up."  This was not a young voter.  

Who Voted?

I wasn't signing people in so I couldn't see the political affiliation of the voters.  And that really wasn't relevant since everyone now gets the same primary ballot.  I'm not even sure that information was on the register.  

It seemed to me that the people voting were far more likely to be over 50 than under 30.  Perhaps this just reflected that I was there mid-day when younger folks are working. (Though that's probably less a factor in 2022 than 2019.)  The vast majority was white.  

Most were not wearing masks.  But there were people wearing masks as well.  All the poll workers wore masks.  

A few people had kids with them.  

Write-In Votes

You can only choose one write-in candidate for the ranked choice part of the election.  I found that out when the machine alerted me that someone had put in two write-in candidates.  Afterward we talked about that.  The consensus seemed to be that there could only be four finalists in the ranked choice part of the vote.  It was speculated that had Al Gross not dropped out after being the fourth candidate, there would have been no write-ins allowed.  But I don't know for sure.  

There was some dispute about whether non-certified candidates could be written in.  I mentioned that I'd asked about the difference between certified and uncertified write-in candidates at the election office last week and they said there was no difference.  But another worker said someone who wasn't certified couldn't take office.  That might be, because my question was about what happens to someone's SECOND vote (in the ranked choice voting), if they voted for a non-certified write-in candidate first or second.  The answer was, there is no difference.  In both cases your next vote would count if no one got 50%+1 in that round.  

One Odd Incident

At one point I noticed there was a woman who had been at a voting booth (one of the two without privacy covers) for a while.  I guessed about 30 minutes already.  And then our precinct captain asked me if she had voted.  She was gone, but I didn't notice her if she voted.  (I was the person staffing the voting machine.)  One of the people signing people in said she saw the women walk by when I was helping someone else vote.  Yes, she'd signed in and been given a ballot.  She was holding a privacy sleeve (and presumably a ballot inside) when she walked out.  Someone checked the trash cans outside the gym we were in, but there was no ballot. 

All the ballots are given out in numerical order and in the end all the ballots have to be accounted for.  Torn up ballots are counted.  Challenged ballots are counted.  All the ballots that go into the voting machine are counted.  Fortunately someone so the woman walk out with a ballot - though she didn't realize the significance until we put it all together.  So that ballot got an special report to account for it.  

I Voted Stickers

The last part of my job was to make sure there were enough stickers for people who voted to choose from.  Really.  We first make people choose who to vote for and then when they think they are done, they have to choose which I Voted Sticker they want.  

There's the traditional Alaska flag sticker.  One that shows three different sets of shoes below the voting curtain, and then three different Alaska Native themed stickers.  At times it was busy enough that I was down to two or three stickers left on the chair.  

Voting Location Changes

[UPDATED August 16, 2022  6:40pm]  I forgot this point when I first posted.  A lot of people voting today were used to voting at a church nearby.  They went there first. One of the early morning poll workers put up a sign on the church door to come to our location.  But some of the people coming from the church were not listed on our register.  The poll workers were able to look up the voters (on their phones) to find out their new polling place.  It was a couple of miles away.  Another sign was then added to the church door.  But this is an issue that Redistricting Boards should consider more carefully when the draw their lines.  I know my old polling place is now in another district and my new polling place is further away.  Seems to be an issue.  Of course, this is also the first time many people are voting after Redistricting is in place for the next ten years. 

I'm not sure how the ranked choice votes are tallied. [UPDATED August 18, 2022 1:15am:  From the Division of Elections website

"Ranked Choice Voting Tabulations

Ranked Choice Voting results will not be available until August 31, 2022 once all eligible ballots are reviewed and counted."

Here's the link for the primary election unofficial results.]

 First all the votes have to be counted.  Then one candidate is dropped and all that candidate's second choice votes have to be distributed to the remaining candidates until someone has over 50%.  That obviously has to be done centrally when all the votes are in.  So it may be a while before we find out the winner of the special election.  And I don't know how the public verifies that the second and third choice votes are properly allocated.  I guess will find that out in the next week or more.  

*I mentioned that a lot of people thanked me for volunteering.  I was, in fact, volunteering.  The Division of Elections has a program where a non-profit can volunteer to run a polling place.  Instead of paying the staff, the non-profit gets paid.  But my understanding is that most people working at polling places are paid.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  Just a clarification.