Turn it off and on

It's a computer--of course that's how you fix it...

So yesterday, I worked as an Inspector at the elections. Our precinct was supposed to have five people working. At the last election we had only three (and that was a primary where we had five different ballots). So I called all the other people and one said she couldn't come, so I asked Adrienne. Adrienne was happy to be my fifth, but then she got sick and I was back to four (but at least I didn't get sick).

This year we had a supervisor who appeared to be a volunteer (like us, probably paid a stipend for the day) from the county who was "in charge" of five precincts. She hung around to see how we were doing and to write down when we took breaks. She wasn't much help, but she did have extra signs in her box, so that helped a little.

Also this year we had a ballot "reader". It was a big, heavy computer that sat on top of the ballot box. The voter placed their ballot in the "reader" and if they voted twice for the same measure (yes and no) or for more than one candidate for one office, then it would spit the ballot back out and the voter would have to try again. As I am writing this I have this image of a midget in the box, looking at each ballot and popping it back out if it was wrong. This year the midget was nonpartisan--who knows about next year.

Anyway, all day we had to yell at voters not to put their ballot in the box until after we took their receipt off. Once the "reader" accepts it, we can't get it back. Late in the day, a voter put their receipt in the "reader" and it spit it back out. Good news, right. NOT. (That's a joke from Borak--man, that was a funny movie--disgusting as anything ever thought of by human beings, but funny).

After the "reader" spit out the receipt, it said reader offline. The book said to hit "override" if the reader was offline. We did and nothing happened. So we hit "help" and it gave us a general description of how to plug the reader into the wall. There was a button to push for Voting Closed, but I didn't want to go there. So now we had a line of about three voters and I said, you can put your ballot in the box without the reader "checking" it for errors, or you can wait. They all agreed to wait. I called my "supervisor" and she sounded pretty clueless, but said she'd be right over. Then I called the 800 number. I got a recording wanting to know my address, so they could tell me where to vote. Big help. Then I found a local number and after a little bit of button pushing I got a live person.

He said, what's the problem. I told him the ballot reader was offline and the override button did not work. He said, your audio voter is not working? No I told him, the ballot reader is offline. I told him about the receipt that was put in in error and how it spit it out and now the overide button did not work.

"Is the "reader" plugged in?" He asked. "Yes" I said very patiently. "Have you used the orange cord to plug the "reader" into the wall?" He asked. "Yes. Why are you asking me these questions--" and I explained the entire problem again. "Is the "reader" turned on?" He asked. "Yes" I said a lot less patiently. "I have to ask these questions" the guy said. He obviously had a script. Now there were about eight voters waiting to cast their ballots and another six at the booths and another three or four waiting for a booth to open. That's a lot of people in our little polling place.

We went through his script, the reader was turned on, I had used the Inspector header card, the paper was not jammed, the power source was working, etc., etc. and then he put me on hold. While I was on hold, my "supervisor" arrived. She looked frightened and completely without knowledge. I let her off the hook and told her I had called the county office. Finally a person who knew what they were talking about came on the line. Turn the machine on and off, he said. Are you sure, I said. Yes, he said. I did. He said, it will take about five minutes for it to warm up and he would stay on the line to make sure it worked after that.

I explained to the ten or so people now waiting that the reader was designed to detect voter error. If they felt confident that they had not overvoted or made any errors, they could put their ballot in the box without going through the reader--before I could say anything else we had a stampede of voters putting their ballots in manually.

Needless to say, it worked and all was right with the world once again. [Except that now that I have mentioned the Borak movie I have the little bit of the image that I wasn't fast enough to close my eyes for of the naked guys fighting. Yuck!]