Election Day 2020

 

I walked into the Lions Club on Porter Road about 5:30 a.m. on November 3.  The street running between Post and Champlain Streets was renamed Bellvue Avenue, but it will always be Porter Road to me.

My fellow election judges were still setting up.  Two precincts stage elections at the Lions Club.  Ottawa 12 and Ottawa 4.  We share voting booths, a vote tabulator, and a secure WiFi connection to the County Clerk’s office.  Ottawa 4 judges mark their ballots and applications using red pens while we at Ottawa 12 use green.  At the end of the day we remove all the ballots from the tabulator, divide them according to those ink colors, and finish our work separately.

I set up our precinct’s tablet pollbook computer that contains a data base of registered voters.  That is generally my workstation throughout the day although we switch jobs from time to time.  I confirmed it was synced to the correct precinct, updated, and ready to go when the polls opened at 6:00.

We unpacked our ballots, put up the required signs and notices, set up the Plexiglass shield (new this year) in front of the judges station, put hand sanitizer and masks near the entrance, unpacked the ballots, security sleeves, the application spindles, all the stuff.  A lot of gear goes into an election.

After we all raise our hands, take the oath, and sign various forms I like to be the one to do the yell out the door at 6:00 a.m..  (Not sure this is still required.)  At the first election I worked I assumed it was a joke.  Something they pulled on rookies.

My mentor, a veteran (read old) election judge, was obviously not kidding. 

“Will you announce the polls opening?  It’s part of the process,” he said, showing me a script.

I read about announcing the polls opening in the book he handed me, laughed, then looked back up at him.  He never cracked a smile.  Serious as a heart attack.

“I’ll do it if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’ll do it.”

We were in the gym of an old school on Bucklin in LaSalle.  It was sometime in the 90’s.  I walked across the basketball floor, went to the side door we were using as an entrance, opened it, and yelled loudly into the dark night, to no one.

“Oyez, Oyez.  The polls are now open.”

Crickets.

I shut the door and walked back to my station.  I felt like the town crier.  That had to be a holdover from the very earliest elections held after Illinois became a state in 1818.  Government really does change slowly.   

On November 3, 2020 I didn’t get the chance to do the yell.  We inadvertently left the door unlocked and a woman came in early, at about 5:50, took a chair, and waited patiently.  Before 6:00 there were two people behind her.  It stayed that way most of the day.  Busiest election I ever worked.

With me at the Ottawa 12 precinct was a 21-year old election judge working her first election along with an experienced young man.  Well, younger than me at least, and very familiar with all the forms and processes involved in an election.  I appreciate working with someone who likes and knows details. They were both Republicans and I am a Democrat.  Ideally, we would have had another judge but that wasn’t possible this year.  If the clerk’s office had been able to fill that slot, they would have made the additional judge a Democrat. 

I liked former County Clerk JoAnn Carretto’s reference for party affiliation.  She simply referred to us as R’s or D’s.  I can hear her voice at the trainings in the basement of the LaSalle County courthouse.

“OK, if you do curbside voting,  when you can’t get someone inside the polling place, you can go out to their car and do everything you would do inside but two of you have to go, and you have to make sure one is an R and the other a D.  You got that?  R and a D, then we’re all good.”

We alternate R’s and D’s as much as possible along the precinct’s tables.  If there is a D identifying the voter as registered in the precinct and eligible for a ballot, then an R signs off on the voter’s application and issues the ballot.  Two sets of eyes on that process, one from each of the two major parties.

The county determines party affiliation from our voting record in primary elections.  Lots of voters don’t like that Illinois requirement and some do not vote in primaries because of it, but that’s the system.  The system has changed very little during my time as a judge. 

JoAnn would also remind us, in that deadpan voice of hers, the rules for returning the ballots, the memory card from the tabulator, the various forms signed by all the judges, and all the gear to the courthouse.

“OK, let’s talk supply judges.  After the polls close and your votes are counted, when the number of ballots voted plus spoiled ballots subtracted from the number of ballots matches the number you were issued, you load all your stuff in your vehicle and bring it up to the courthouse, get in line, and DON’T LEAVE till we tell you everything checks out and it is OK for you to go.  You all with me?”

It’s the end of the training.  The election judges in the basement murmur tiredly.

“Now, who can tell me how many people have to be in that car?”

“Two,” someone says.

“That’s right and who do they need to be?”

“A Republican and a Democrat.”

“That’s right.  A D and an R.  Those ballots have been with you all day, in the same room, and in the end, two of you travel with them to the courthouse and give them to us.  Then your job is done.”

JoAnn’s replacement, Lori Bongartz, worked for JoAnn and was part of those past trainings.  She leads them now.  There’s a lot of continuity in the County Clerk’s office in LaSalle County.  Procedures change slowly, but when they do election judges know all about them, because the clerk and her staff tell us about them in detail.

We learn new procedures best by using them during an election.   Learning by doing is awkward sometimes, but it works.  Election judges do the same thing over and over.  It goes like this.

Guy walks into the precinct and looks confused.

“How you doing today sir?”

He’s looking around.  People are voting in the booths while others are standing in front of the two rows of tables representing two precincts.  Maybe he has his voter registration card in his hand.  Maybe he looks at it but remains confused.

“I think I’m in the right place, but I don’t remember my precinct.”

His precinct number is on the card, but in tiny print in an unlikely place.

“Let’s find out.  What’s your name? Let’s start with the last name.”

“Johnson.  Tim Johnson.”

In the tablet computer is a database of registered voters in LaSalle County.  I have it set to search the Ottawa 12 precinct.  I type Johnson into the tablet on the last name line and a bunch of Johnsons pop up.  I type Tim on the first name line and two pop up.

“What’s your address Tim?”

He tells me.  It matches one of the two addresses listed for Tim Johnson.

“Yeah, we got you right here.”

We used to flip through pages and pages of registered voters to find names.  With the tablet it takes only a few seconds.

“You’re in the right place.  Ottawa 12.”

If he had not been in my precinct, he likely would have been in Ottawa 4 a few steps away.  I see that he has not been mailed a ballot or voted early.  That makes him a registered voter eligible to cast a ballot.  I print a label with his name and address on it and paste it on an application for a ballot.

“Sign right here would you please, Tim?”

I click another tab and a clear picture of Tim’s signature, taken from when he registered to vote, appears on the tablet screen.  After he signs the application, I compare the two signatures.  They match.  I initial the application on a line that says something like ‘Registration verified by _____.’ 

Often the judge sitting next to me glances at the screen and sees that the signatures match.  He or she initials the line that says ’Ballot issued by_______.’ 

He then numbers the application and put it on a spindle.  He initials the ballot in green ink, so we know it comes from Ottawa 12, and passes it to the next judge.  That judge gives the voter some basic directions, asks if there are questions, directs him or her to any open voting booth, and points to the tabulating machine where the ballot is taken when done.  Pretty simple deal.

The tabulator is a simply a locked metal bin with an optical scanner on top.  It reads the voter’s selected candidates and stores that information on a memory card.  Optical scanners are old and unhackable technology, connected to nothing but an electrical outlet.  Its not fancy but it works.

People often want to give us their voter registration card, or driver’s license, as if they need to prove their identity to get a ballot.  We know their identity because of the registration process.  The crucial part of making sure the person requesting a ballot is eligible to vote is matching the signature.  It’s eerie how closely signatures tell the story of who we are.

By now, I’ve watched thousands of people sign their names on those applications.  Some take a long time, some scrawl out marks in seconds, some are small and cramped, while others are grand and flamboyant.  However signatures appear on my screen, when the voter signs the application the two signatures inevitably look the same.

I was pointing that out to first time judge sitting next to me late in the afternoon.  You get a little punchy after a while.  I was about to give the person in front of me an application to sign.  When his signature came up on the screen, I whispered to get her attention.

“Look at this.”

His signature was more like a drawing.  The first mark was way up off the signature line.  It might have been an S but it looked more like an exaggerated comma.  Next was a small batch of marks on the line, then an explosion of big squiggles to finish it out.  It appeared to have no relationship to his printed name.

We watched as he quickly scratched out his signature.  My partner took his application, handed him a ballot, and he went on his way.  I put his just completed signature next to the image of his signature on my tablet screen.  Not a damned bit of difference.  Illegible, but identical.

I have never, so far, rejected a signature.  That’s because they always match.  I’ve not been involved in mail in voting, but I’m sure the signature is vital there too.  Signatures tell us the person requesting a ballot has a right to a ballot.  The voter marks it, puts it in the tabulator which records the voter’s choices, and at the end of the day the votes are counted.

Throughout the day we check to make sure the number of ballots issued on the tablet, the hand-written number of ballot applications on the spindle, and the combined number of ballots put through the tabulator by both precincts match.  If those counts are off, we must resolve it.  We don’t know which candidates voters select until we read the tape when the polls are closed.  And as we work we don't care.  Our job is to safeguard the ballots, and to make sure those voting them are eligible to do so.  At the end of the day we deliver them to the County Clerk.  That’s the deal.

We can do more now than we could on past election days.  For example, we have been doing same day registration for a number of years.  Once you learn how, the tablet pollbooks make that process much easier.  It quickly became my favorite thing to do as an election judge.

In the afternoon a middle-aged man came to vote and before he left for the booth, he asked a question.

“Today is my son’s eighteenth birthday.  November third.  If he came in here today could you register him and let him vote?”

“Absolutely,” my co-worker said.  “As long as he comes in with two forms of ID that show him residing at an address within the precinct.”

“Well he lives with me.  He was talking about voting this morning and I told him I’d find out if he could.  He really wants to vote.”

“Then by all means send him in.”

About an hour later a boy came in with a fistful of papers. 

“I’d like to register to vote.”

“Did your Dad come in earlier and talk to us about this?”

“Yeah.” He was smiling.  “I have my birth certificate, driver’s license, library card, bunch of stuff.”

“We’ve been waiting for you.  Step off to the side here.  We’ve got a form for you to fill out and then we’ll enter you into the system.  Won’t take long.”

“Great.” 

I processed a few more voters and he returned with the completed form.  I was getting the hang of it.  It takes clicking on several screens we don’t typically use but I navigated through it, entering information off his form.

“OK.  We’re going to issue you a ballot.  As long as you live at this address, in the Ottawa 12 precinct, this will be your polling place.  Unless you hear different.  The County Clerk will mail you your voter’s registration card.  You’re all set.”

“Thanks,” he said. “This is great.”

The judge down the line gave him his first ever ballot, explained how to mark it, and directed him to a voting booth.

In a few minutes he emerged from the voting booth, pushed his ballot into the tabulator, and got his sticker.

He walked over to my station. 

“Thanks again,” he said, still smiling.  “I thought I’d waited too long.  This is really cool.”

“I think so too.  Congratulations.  Welcome to American democracy.  Glad you’re part of it.”

In 2016 Donald Trump narrowly won over Hillary Clinton in Ottawa’s 12^th precinct. I wish I could find those numbers, but so far they escape me.  I came home after working that election with an uneasy feeling.  My celebratory whiskey on the rocks went sour in the wee hours of Wednesday morning after Michigan was called by the networks for Trump.  I went to bed and woke up to what I’d feared since the polls closed.

Four years later I came home with that same bad feeling.  We had 267 voters in our precinct during election day, and we knew from the pollbook 288 had voted early.  That’s a turnout of over 72%, which has never been that high.  Say anything you want about our recent election; the real winner was civic involvement.  I think both the D’s and the R’s won by that measure.

Of the 267 the tape from the tabulator, which all of the judges in the precinct sign, showed that of election day voters in Ottawa 12, 259 participated in the presidential contest.  157 voted for Trump and 102 for Biden.  I didn’t stay up to watch TV election coverage for the result because I was sure nothing would be decided that night.  I was tired, and worried besides.   

But in 2020 the vote on election day was only part of the story. 

Sometime later I checked the County Clerk’s website for election results.  119 of 119 precincts had reported.  All the early votes had been counted.  I went straight to Ottawa 12.

256 votes were cast in Ottawa 12 for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.  283 were cast for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  My neighbors and I made a slight change in our voting pattern.  The D’s presidential candidate edged out the R’s by 27 votes.   I could only hope, as a Democrat, that pattern held across the country.  And it did.

I don’t doubt for a second the accuracy of the vote in my precinct in LaSalle County, or of my county’s election results.  We have good people working the election who take their oath and their job seriously.

I believe elections across America are similarly accurate.  Elections are local, staffed by common people, and managed by local government officials like our County Clerk who answers to the people she serves.  That is what makes American elections free and fair.

You can be displeased by the outcome of this election, but for Christ’s sake don’t throw America’s vote counting process under the bus.  Elections are run by your neighbors and proven over and over to be accurate.  I have a close-up view of how it works and have never seen fraud of any kind. 

Let’s accept the result, shall we?  We’ll do it all again in four years.  With any luck, I will once again be at the Lions Club.  I hope you are part of the process too, either by voting early, going to your precinct on election day, or becoming an election judge. 

Don’t doubt that your vote counts.  Its how we Americans strive to build that more perfect union.  It will never be perfect you know, but we won’t stop trying.