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Dispatch from the Election Worker: Day One of Real Work
At 8:30 a.m., I started my temporary, seasonal, election worker job, doing Signature Verification for my County, which has all-mail voting (the state has been all-mail for many years now). [On the news today is a story stating that our state received a perfect score on its handling of all-mail voting]. I think I made about half a dozen errors, but the supervisors were able to extricate me without much problem. By the end of the day, I checked in the neighborhood of 3,000 ballot signatures.
There were 16 of us at work today, which would account for about 48,000 total ballot signatures verified. Some, but not many, were challenged for various reasons. The most common reason was “signatures do not match.” I had a few. I saw more than one “symbol” signatures, each of which had its required two witness signatures (the most common reason for this is a voter disabled, or otherwise unable to sign their name).
When I have to do a task that could be very boring, I try to make a game out of it, learn something, or both. Today’s experience was both. I had to laugh multiple times when I saw a name that was just too ridiculous to be true. A few times, I silently wondered what motivates parents to name their kids totally weird names. I wondered if they had been bullied in school for their names. How would you like to be named Fantasy Sunshine, or Prosperity?
One family had outsize expectations of its son, so they named him Aurangzeb (the real guy being an 18th-century Mughal Emperor). One guy had the surname of Gesundheit. One had the given name of “Science” but he was a bit too old to tell his parents to “Listen to the Science!” I verified the signatures of five people I know, one of whom is my doctor! The other four were current or former employees at my old job, which made me smile.
Finally, I came to some conclusions regarding ballot-signing, which might benefit those of you who have not yet voted. First, sign your ballots in cursive! Do not print your name on your ballot, sign it. I saw dozens of printed ballot signatures, many of which were challenged because the printed ballot did not match the cursive voter record. If you want to make sure your ballot is not rejected due to signature not matching voter records, look at how you signed your driver’s license. Sign exactly that way.
Next, try to make your signature readable. A “squiggle” signature not only cannot be read but is pretty easy to forge. I saw dozens of those. The easier your signature is to forge, the more likely it will be that someone will use it to cast an illegal vote, thus depriving you of your vote. And, lastly, sign your full name on your driver’s license and on your ballot. Many names are remarkably similar, and you want the verifier to instantly know that you are who you say you are.
I go back tomorrow, a half-hour earlier than today. Our county predicts a 90 percent turnout for this election, and they might be close to that. I predict that I will be putting in a fair number of hours before all the ballots are counted. It is a very interesting job, and I am definitely going to ask to be called for all subsequent elections. You retirees out there, it’s a great way to make some money doing a vital job, and you can keep an eye on how things are done, where it counts!
Published in Elections
A friend since high school’s maiden name was Candy Apple. We were born in the mid-1950s.
A family in the town in which we lived for the first 20 years of our marriage had the surname “Rabbit.” The oldest of the three kids was named “Peter.” He became an independent insurance agent and embraced the obvious Beatrix Potter connection by incorporating into his business branding imagery that imitated the art work in the Beatrix Potter books. His sister was named “Bunny.”
A private school where I lived until two years ago had a billboard advertising that one of their differentiators from other schools was that the school taught cursive handwriting. The billboard included, in cursive form, “Can you read this?”
I “journal” in cursive using a fountain pen. Typing on computer doesn’t provide the same tactile satisfaction.
Bunny. Rabbit.
That’s child abuse, right there.
Some parents need to be flogged.
Easy for you to say; you’re right handed. Try using a fountain pen as a lefty.
Here are today’s developments. We were let go early, just after noon. I verified about 2,500 signatures today. I observed that the middle names for women, Marie and Rae are very popular. Women of all ages seem to be given those middle names a lot. Today’s funny first names and first+middle combos: Flux; Holly Mistletoe; Delaware; Harmonie; Lenin (gee, I wonder what his parents’ political proclivities might be); Unique (middle name). And just be glad your last name is not Yeshitla.
In the middle of my shift, my supervisor dropped by my desk to compliment me on my accuracy, and tell me that she thought I have a really good eye for name checking. Later, just before I left, she confidentially informed me that, when they winnow out all the checkers, that I would definitely be staying on the team. And she was very pleased that I want to do this job for subsequent elections. So it looks like I will have a pretty steady “seasonal” job in retirement. And I expect to be working full days starting next week when the bulk of ballots should be arriving.
I had some pretty interesting errors, too. We have had a rash of people in the same household signing each other’s ballots. The program they use has a button marked “household”, that shows you all of the voters at the same address. You can see how pretty often husbands and wives sign each other’s ballots-once you determine that this is the problem, both ballots are accepted. Also today, I had a woman whose name was “Georgina” sign her ballot as “George”. After a consult with supervisor, we approved it, since the handwriting was the same.
Anyway, I am done for this week, awaiting info on next week’s schedule.
Of course, it could be worse; it could be Major Major Major.
On one page of my signatures, the last one was named “Minor”. The first one on the next page was named “Major”. Balance, balance.
I guess in the 50s, nobody would have thought of “Roger.”
A clairvoyant might.
If that was my last name, I would name my kid Knot, so that in Lastname, first format the name would Yeshitla Knot.
Roger, Roger.
We have clearance, Clarence,
What’s our vector, Victor?
What do you check the signatures against for people who don’t have a current driver’s license?
Ditto from me. I am so proud that a fellow Ricochetti is out there doing the job. Better yet, I am thrilled to have a conservative doing the job.
We check signatures against voter registrations and drivers licenses. Many voters have both, which makes our job much easier. If you do not drive, you can get a state ID card. Drivers license signatures are now not written on a piece of paper, but a device like an iPad, so they are written with no wrist support, which, in my opinion, makes it more likely that the signature will be abbreviated or harder to match with the paper ballot. We work with what we have, and if we are at all unsure, we can ask for second or third opinions.