Political Graffiti

We walked past this sign Wednesday night.  It seems someone felt Clary's connection to the Anchorage Baptist Temple deserved some recognition on his signs.

And when I checked the spelling of 'graffiti' I found this do-it-yourself graffiti creator site.  This just popped out of my finger tips.  It just seemed right to play with their "Kodiak' style.  [UPDATE March 8, 2014:  I went back to the diy site today and I can't find the page where I created the image below.  Now it looks like you have to buy it all.  Graffiti artists need to make a living too.  But you can go to fontmeme where you can generate your own graffiti in different fonts and colors.]

From the Muni Election page:

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 4 -SEAT F Total Number of Precincts 25 Precincts Reporting 23 92.0% Times Counted 6178/35860 17.2% Total Votes 6055 CLARY, Andy 2506 41.39% TRAINI, Dick 3497 57.75% Write-in Votes 52 0.86%

Poll Worker Notes

Tuesday was Municipal Elections in Anchorage  By the time elections ended at 8pm, we'd already started closing down the polling place.  Some of the Vote Here signs were brought in.  We started counting the people on the register who'd voted.  Putting furniture back the way it had been. (We took pictures the day before. :) ) There were three people who'd been working since 6:15 am and two others who came about 1pm.  We did a lot of stuff reasonably well, but there were some problems too. 





I was counting the people in the register who'd voted.  They'd been marked with a

Roster smudged to hide identifiers

highlighter so it was fairly easy to count and a subtotal on each page.  But my total was one more than the votes counted on the voting machine and 9 less than the number of ballots we'd given out.  There had been 10 questioned ballots so the voting machine and the ballot stub numbers matched, but I was one off.  That got resolved when the chair remembered that a worker had marked the wrong name in the morning and then had marked the right name.  So there was one extra bright yellow highlighted name and that had been marked.  It took us a couple more runs to find where that was marked.  So that was ok.

But then they were missing something they called the memory card envelope that was supposed to hold the computer printout tapes we'd all signed..  We tore everything open and then closed everything back up looking for it.  The chair swore it had been right there.  Someone found a clear plastic envelope/bag and proposed putting the computer tapes in there instead.  We didn't know where the bag had come from and whether it belonged to the church that was hosting the polling place or what.  But we couldn't find the one we needed so it was stuck in this new clear plastic bag with green on it.

One of the workers who was still there is older and has had back and neck surgery and was clearly tired.  (Actually, most of us were older.)  But she knew what she was doing and was acting as the co-chair.  We carried stuff to the chair's car while the chair was calculating the time sheet for all the workers.  (Yes, I had a paying job!)  There was a drop from the church floor out to the parking lot that wasn't marked and J stumbled and fell to the ground and had to rest a few minutes before she had the strength to get up with my help.  She and the chair had all the stuff in the car and drove off to City Hall to drop it off.  We were only two block from City Hall and I debated if I should walk or drive.  I drove but it turned out the parking lot was jammed and so I went back and parked near the church and walked back.

You can see a video of this in yesterday's post

The Chair and J were finally near the door and unloading everything at the end of the line of people and I helped at that point.  The Chair left to park her car and I stayed with J.  It was clear to me she was really tired and I suggested I drive her back to her car and send her home and I'd stay with the Chair.  But when the Chair got back before I could say anything, she asked if I could stay and help.  I said yes, because that's what I intended to do, but then the Chair said she had a 7am flight and would leave me and J to finish up.  J agreed over my protest and the Chair said good bye and left.

Someone brought us a cart to put the boxes and bags on and we waited in line in the chilly, but not too cold night.  Soon they were ushering the line inside the building and at least had the line where it was warmer.  They also passed out water and candy and later vegies - and assured us this was not from taxpayer dollars. 


Eventually we got to two folks who took our stuff.  They had a checklist they were working through.  The voting machine, the sealed memory card in the machine, the ballots, the questioned ballots, etc.  J was concerned about the envelope that held the printed out tapes from the voting machine.  But it turned out the plastic bag/envelope we found to put them in was actually what they were supposed to be in.  Our red bag - with the questioned ballots (we didn't have any special needs) - didn't have a zip tie, but they put one on.   I know that no one tampered with them, but still . . .  it should have been sealed. 

J and I had been there since 6:15am and it was pushing 10:30pm.  We had some questions about the time sheets for the poll workers.  Our chair had put 8 hours down as the total for everyone as ST (Straight Time, I think) and all the rest was OT (overtime.)  But that didn't make sense to me.  I thought there shouldn't be overtime unless you worked 8 hours in one day.  They told me my way of calculating was correct. 

We were finally done.  I got my car and came back to pick up J and drive her to her car.  I thought about going to election central across the street at the Dena'ina Center, but I was just too tired and went home. 

Wild End To Generally Quiet Day At The Polling Place

I'll write tomorrow after I get a good night's sleep, but the end of the day proved a lot more hectic than I expected with a huge mob of election workers jammed up at City Hall trying to turn in the ballots, voting machines, and other odds and ends.

But here's a glimpse of the election workers waiting to get their materials checked in.  This was about 9:30pm.  Polls closed at 8.  We finally got out about 10:45pm.






I watched this function last November as a poll watcher at the State and Federal election.  They had a lot more space and had runners going out to the cars as they pulled up who carried the equipment into the room.  I also know that new Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones has worked hard to make sure this election didn't suffer the problems that happened last year.  And people were out offering help - someone gave us a cart to put everything on - and someone else was offering candy and another had bottles of water.  Given the long line, in the end we got through in about an hour and were handled very efficiently and courteously by the people inside.  And as we were leaving someone was offering vegies on a tray. 

 Doing this as a poll worker gave me a whole different look at what goes on.  After getting the ballot materials turned in, I was just too tired to go over to election central and I have no idea what the results of the election were.  I'll read the paper when i get up tomorrow.  

It's 10 am and 34 People Have Voted So Far

There are 890 people listed on the register in this precinct.  Some have gotten absentee ballots and some may have voted early.  


Most of the stuff was set up last night.  We were here at 6:15am (physically here, not necessarily mentally) and had to set up of the ballot box.  We walked through the instructions starting with opening it up and checking to see it was empty in all three chambers.  One chamber is for ballots that don't work right in the main slot and in case the power goes off.  Then there's an extra one if the main chamber gets full.  You have to open the top and put the ballots into that second chamber so there is room in the main chamber. 






Then you have to slide the Accu-Vote machine into place, plug it in, then turn it on.  Next we took the cover off of the compartment that has the tape. 










  The tape automatically starts and the window is supposed to have the precinct number and have a zero.  Then it lists a bunch of zeroes - I'm assuming one for each item on the ballot. 

Then each of the poll-workers signs the tape and it gets rolled up and the cover to this compartment is locked on.  There was a little metal bar with a metal security band locked on.   The tail of the security band kept getting caught in the cover as we tried to lock that on.  Eventually we got it right. 

We all had to take an oath to uphold the laws of the US, the State of Alaska, and the Municipality of Anchorage.

We had an early voter who was here before 7am who waited until it was time to start.  Then there was a steady flow.  By 8am we had had 11 voters, one of whom was a questioned ballot. (Someone who was from another precinct.)







We had a brief scare as someone asked about the Assembly race and why that wasn’t on the ballot.  He was right.  There were just two school board races.  No Assembly race.  But we figured out that the Assembly member from this district wasn't up for reelection.  But the voter said that his wife had voted early at Loussac Library and had an Assembly race on her ballot. 

This raised a question for me - if someone votes a questioned ballot in another polling place, could they vote for a candidate that isn’t on their own ballot in their home precinct?

We checked with , reported the situation the man told us about with the election office and checked on what happens to questioned ballots with races the voter isn't eligible to vote for.  They said that questioned ballots are hand checked for precincts and if they get a ballot with races they can’t vote for, those are voided. 

We’ve got strawberries, grapes, and muffins that the other workers brought in to munch on - and for people who voted. 

This Year I'm An Election Worker - Come Vote Today

I've been a poll watcher and last year I spent a fair amount of time following up Anchorage's screwed up election.  This year I decided to see things from the inside - I'm working as a poll worker. 

I picked up a copy of the elections handbook and read it carefully. 

There's a list of all the things you're supposed to have - though there are other things listed in the Manual - like an election binder - that isn't on this list.

There are about five troubleshooting pages.

I met with the chair of the precinct and another poll worker Monday night to set things up.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm not expecting a high turnout for this non-mayoral election, though the Assembly races will make a significant long term difference.  We could increase the mayor's majority or we could get a more liberal majority. 

So, be sure to vote.