I spent the morning in a lecture hall at North Seattle Community College for training for my first time as a King County Elections poll worker this fall. Here are my impressions -- praise for some positive improvements but also disappointment that King County is purposefully not instructing poll workers about their statutory obligation to guard against illegal voting.
First, I'll say some good things about the training session. The trainers seemed knowledgeable about the material they were asked to present. The materials were reasonably clear and concise and the session presented a lot of detail efficiently. No time or handouts were wasted on extraneous stuff like "People First Language Guidelines" that took place for earlier elections. There are also a number of beneficial new improvements in both the training and the administration of polling places this election. For example, all poll workers are re-trained at every election (but not at both primary and subsequent general). This costs slightly more, but seems like a good investment.
Most importantly, there are some overdue but welcome improvements that should help prevent illegal ballots from being fed into the AccuVote machines. Absentee voters are not listed in the same poll book as polling place voters. This should help prevent absentee voters from receiving regular ballots, as happened hundreds of times last November. Furthermore, polling places will have a dedicated station and dedicated provisional ballot judge who is exclusively responsible for all provisional ballots at that polling place. Anybody whose name does not appear in a regular poll book, or who does not present an acceptable ID is sent to the provisional table. In previous elections, every precinct judge would issue both regular and provisional ballots, and this seemed to facilitate errors. Also, provisional ballots are now different from regular ballots and are designed to be rejected by the AccuVotes. We'll see how these changes work in practice, but they sound sensible to me. I commend Dean Logan (you don't see those words here very often) for finally making these changes.
On the other hand, I was disappointed that the training emphasized only one half of the poll judge's duties. As the trainer said at the outset:
Our goal this election is to build voter confidence. If there's any one mission we can all lay out for ourselves it's to do that. And one of the ways we can do that of course is by being courteous and respectfulThis handout defines the role of judges as
issues ballots and instructs and assists voters at the polls. True enough. But the judge's statutory oath also says that
we will not give our consent to the receipt of any vote or ballot from any person, other than one whom we firmly believe to be entitled to vote at such electionThe judge has an affirmative obligation to prevent illegal voting, but this was never mentioned. The trainers never discussed the oath. Another handout said "Never refuse anyone the right to vote!". That is correct, however the poll worker has a right and duty to challenge a suspected ineligible voter, when there is a sound basis for the suspicion. There were no handouts and only scant discussion devoted to challenging a voter. Every polling place gets a sealed package of forms and instructions for a poll worker to administer a challenge, but they couldn't really explain what to do with it or the situations in which one is supposed to issue a challenge. This was the actual dialogue:
Trainer 1: There's a package that nobody has ever opened. I think a few people have. But it has all the instructions if you have a challenged ballot ...I asked if they had an actual list of reasons for challenging a voter and they didn't have one. Granted, the number of actual polling place challenges is likely to be small. But poll workers should be fully informed of their duties, guidelines and proper procedures for safeguarding the integrity of the vote. I suggested to the trainer after they session that they include more materials on why and how to challenge a voter. He seemed surprised when I told him that the RCW (the oath) affirmatively obligates poll judges to prevent illegal voting. He seemed to take his duties as a trainer quite seriously so I suspect the people who designed the training program believe that poll judges aren't supposed to be trained to know about such things and that they didn't even train the trainers on the subject. That would be consistent with King County's apparent policy to "count every vote" while looking the other way at illegal votes whenever they can get away with it. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 24, 2005 04:23 PM | Email ThisTrainer 2 [picking up the challenge envelope]: I feel like the guy in Fail Safe who's opening up the launch codes.
Attendee: It would be pretty much as if somebody came to your table and said they were you.
I think like many other similar endeavors, a lot of honest, hard working people (regardless of affiliation) are willing to give up their time and expose themselves to potential abuse from the public in order to ensure that the noble cause that our forefathers envisioned continues. But, alas, it's hard to not become jaded when a charade of feel-good political correctness is superimposed over the statutory and procedural mandates. Certainly it seems likely that it would minimize, if not render totally moot the legitimacy of the duties of the judges and their sworn duty when smoothness and efficiency replace accuracy.
To enable true and fair elections should be the goal, not to avoid offending someone by making sure their opportunity to cast a [clouded] ballot is compromised.
.\babble off
Semper Fi
Mike
Yeah, leave that out. That wouldn't help restore confidence. It might make the fraudulant people feel stressed when they try and break the law and double vote or vote under an assumed name. They wouldn't want to dissenfranchise the poor soul who is only doing good for "the People".
Some of this stuff has GOT to change. It makes no sense.
Posted by: Michele on August 24, 2005 10:10 PMI appreciate that Stefan was there to point out the obvious to the trainers - and hopefully - they will seriously consider what he taught them.....But come on!
The poll workers are on the front line of protecting our votes from the manipulation and pollution of illegal votes! If the poll workers are discouraged from watching for and taking action against illegal voters....then who will be able to challenge illegal voters in the small time frame stipulated in our RCW?
Do *We the People* have to hang out at the polls and watch every voter sign in? I wouldn't like that! Yet - our laws state that *citizens* are to challenge illegal voters!
King County had better decide - if they want their workers doing the job or the citizens - because NO ONE in this state is going to tolerate illegal votes after last November's BS!
Posted by: Deborah on August 24, 2005 10:26 PMYou got me all worked up to be a poll worker over the past few months, problem is that Whatcom county just went to "all fraud" voting. No more poll workers. Rats.
Posted by: Calvin A on August 25, 2005 07:35 AMThe poll workers are on the front line of protecting our votes from the manipulation and pollution of illegal votes! If the poll workers are discouraged from watching for and taking action against illegal voters....then who will be able to challenge illegal voters in the small time frame stipulated in our RCW?
Do *We the People* have to hang out at the polls and watch every voter sign in? I wouldn't like that! Yet - our laws state that *citizens* are to challenge illegal voters!
What's so bad about this concept? The power is distributed to the local authorities, the (hopefully) non-partisan poll-workers and the (hopefully) partisan poll-watchers.
As with so many ills today, the problem arises when this authority is delegated to anonymous entities like metro, state, and federal departments. Each precinct should have the mandate to collect and count it's votes.
The further away from this simple model we get, the less faith I have in the honesty in the result.
Maybe honesty just cannot exist in metropolitan areas?
Posted by: huckleberry on August 25, 2005 11:01 AMTrainer 2 [picking up the challenge envelope]: I feel like the guy in Fail Safe who's opening up the launch codes.
Attendee: It would be pretty much as if somebody came to your table and said they were you.
It's more like the movie Dr. Strangelove then Fail Safe.
LMAO!
Posted by: kim in vancouver on August 25, 2005 11:12 AMNot only is it their duty--they are the only people who can do it.
Also, Stefan, was there any indication that King County follows the procedure described in RCW 29A.44.201? It involves the announcement of the name the voter claims is his. It seems to be a way for others to know who the voter claims to be. I've not seen it done that way in Kitsap County--I just stated my name to the person with the poll book for my precinct. Others nearby could hear me, but there was no two-person process on the other side of the table.
Posted by: Micajah on August 25, 2005 12:08 PM