Election- From my viewpoint

Did you remember to vote?

It doesn't really matter now. A historic decision was made.

I thought I would share what an election was like from my point of view. I was one of the lucky poll workers who worked yesterday.

Our day started at 6:30 a.m. when we arrived at our designated location. We had a lot of paperwork to go through and ballots to count. We had to set up our booths and our table. At precisely 7:00 a.m. the polls were opened.

Throughout the day, voters came to our table and checked in. At our location, there are several city wards set up. People are not always sure which ward they are registered in, so we help direct them to the right table.

After they are at the right place, they show us their ID, we mark them in the registration book, write their name in the poll book and stamp their ballot. Then they go vote. After they return, I had to check the stamp to make sure that they were returning the correctly stamped ballot to our ward's ballot box (if not our count would be off at the end of the night).

We also have to write down the names of an absentee voters in the registration book and in the poll book. Their ballots go into the ballot box as well.

Finally at 7:00 p.m. the polls close. Then the fun begins. Hopefully we've done an accurate job throughout the day, and everything balances at the end of the night. We have to use the number of ballots that we had in the morning and add the number of absentee ballots that we received. We subtract the number of unused ballots that we have remaining. We also subtract any spoiled ballots that may happened throughout the day (if someone made a mistake). HOPEFULLY the number is the same as the number of voters that is written in the poll book. If that number is the same, we are almost done! We seal up the front of the ballot box. It gets transported to the courthouse where we hand it off to the auditor for counting and we are done for the day, 13 hours later!

I have learned so much about the democratic process by being a poll worker. If you ever get asked to do this I would strongly suggest that you try it.