So here’s a root post for my #electionofficer work. Mute or follow as it suits you.
It’s a special #election in Fairfax County Virginia. 17th district in the Virginia House of Delegates (like a state-level House of Representatives or House of Commons). Virginia also has a State Senate.
These districts are small. Where the full county is something like 250-300 precincts, today it’s just 19 precincts voting. It’s a single race: democrat or republican or write-in.
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Since it’s such a small election, I have seen election staff that I rarely see. I met my “regional rover.” Every precinct has a designated “rover” who is in charge of solving runner-meets-the-road stuff on the day. Missing a piece of kit? Lock stuck and won’t open? Can’t figure out how to work something? The rover is nearby and should respond quickly. The regional rover is apparently the rover’s rover. I never met one, in 20 years doing this. 😀
A member of the actual board of elections showed up to say thank you. Brought us a box of donuts. That’s nice. That’s another thing that has never happened before.
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Our precinct has a little over 2400 registered voters. We have had 38 in the first 3.5 hours.
We are in a small music room in an elementary school. It’s unusual in how small it is and in the fact that there is just one door. Often we are in a cafeteria, gymnasium, or library where there’s multiple doors. You can arrange a traffic flow from one door to the other.
It’s no big deal. Just one more thing we sorta manage on the day.
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One of the most unusual things today is that school is in session. Most of the #elections they close the schools. But there are so many special elections right now they can’t. (1 in Dec, 2 in Jan, 1 each in Feb and March)
So the school has given us a music room off to one end. There’s a gate down in the hallway separating our wing from the rest of the school. This causes a few problems.
Voters go to the main entrance, out of habit. They can’t get in that way, and even if they did, you can’t get here from there. That irks some voters.
Normally we officers are welcome to use a teachers lounge (for microwave to heat our food, fridge, or tables for eating). Thanks to the gate, we can’t get to the lounge unless we leave the building and re-enter the main door by being buzzed in by the office staff.
The staff bathroom is usually what we use, but that is also on the other side of the gate. So we use the bathroom the kids use attached to the gym. Except then a teacher locked the gym when they left. So we had to get the staff to unlock it again.
Another thing that is unusual is the tiny scope of the election, plus the number of special #elections. Sometimes people receive an absentee ballot in the mail, then they decide they want to come in and #vote in person.
That’s fine, we deal with it all the time. It’s easy as long as we get their blank absentee ballot from them. But today, even if they show up with their absentee ballot, I have an extra check to do. I need to make sure they’re giving up an absentee ballot for THIS election in THIS precinct. Typically you don’t worry about that.
A woman come in with her absentee ballot and it was still sealed in an envelope exactly as it had been mailed to her. I had to open it and verify that it was the right election before I could let her vote. (It was, and I did).
I think the schools save money by not running much heat over the weekend. Then yesterday was also a holiday. And it’s been really cold here the last few days. The upshot of all this is that this wing of the school is COLD. Of the 6 officers here today 4 are wearing coats and/or hats. And there’s a bit of work we have to do outside (signage and such at the beginning and end of the day), which is super cold.
We have spoken to the school staff. They’re doing what they can.
Maybe we will pile up some ballots in the center of the room and make a campfire to warm ourselves up. 😜
So we have been visited by 2 different members of the board of elections. One member and the chair. With only 19 precincts in a compact district, they can do that. Chair Hanley was impressive. Former Secretary of the Commonwealth, former chair of the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax. And nice. Apparently she is 82 years old. I wish I could be as active, bright, and engaged at 82.
Having said that, we should have mandatory retirement ages and term limits on most elected positions. Since it is clear that some generations won’t willingly give up power, we kinda need to force it.
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/elections/electoral-board-members-0
Fina couple #electionofficer posts for today. We had about 270 in-person voters in a precinct of about 2500. Add to that I think 100 absentee and early voters and this precinct had a participation rate of about 15%.
The vote total was about 170 D to 100 R. So the democrat took it handily.
Very few unusual scenarios. Last special election, in October, was election on hard mode. My precinct at the time (Centreville Public Library) hit like 19 out of 23 “what if”s. Today we did the inverse: 4 of them.
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#elections
Closing has 3 phases:
My crew was great this time. Everyone was experienced. Nobody wondered what to do. It’s really one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with. I just asked them to do stuff and the next thing I know, it was done.
Virginia has a strange rule that the chief in the precinct has to be the same party as the sitting governor. So for the last 4 years, I was always assistant chief. For the next 4 I will always be chief. I’m fine with that.
I suspect they picked experienced people for this one because we did it with minimal prep and a small crew. As far as I’m concerned, it worked out great.
I’m tired. Goodnight all. I hope you enjoyed reading about #elections from an #electionofficer point of view.
12/fin
This thread is getting a little attention so I thought I would add one more #electionofficer opinion. This is my personal opinion and I speak for no one but me.
Fairfax County #elections are secure.
The election hacking happens every day EXCEPT #electionday. Otherwise well-intentioned people are persuaded to vote for republican troglodytes. Then we very securely use a trustworthy mechanism to correctly and accurately record those votes.
We have so many checks, double checks, 2-person reviews, double-entry book keeping, etc. It is just impossible in my mind to alter an election result with foul play. Every precinct is gonna have one or two irregularities. But those are along the lines of maybe we checked in the wrong voter (checking in Arturo Sanchez Jr, when it was Arturo Sanchez Sr who came in).
It is super unlikely that someone who is totally ineligible to vote wanders in, gives their name, shows some ID (or solemnly swears they are themselves) and votes. Even if one or two got by (which I highly doubt) you wouldn’t get one in every precinct. You couldn’t do it at a scale that could change a result.
So my opinion is that people should look elsewhere to influence elections. Get out the vote, fight disinformation, build community, etc. But don’t spend time on conspiracy theories about space lasers hacking voting machines or some such shit.
I thought I was done with this #electionofficer thread because the #elections were Tuesday. But not quite.
I found out today that my collector officers were the very first out of all 19 precincts to turn in their results. They got cheers from the staff when they arrived. There aren’t a lot of trophies or bragging rights in elections, but getting stuff turned in fast and accurate is something to be proud of.
Nobody had to do the “walk of shame” on Wednesday, and we were really fast getting out.
What is the walk of shame? We have umpteen different forms that have to be signed. Some by any 2 officers, some by all officers, some by the chief, etc. Overnight, the County officials check all the paperwork for all the required signatures. If any are missing, they call the various officers and make them come in on Wednesday and sign what they missed. I’ve had to do that once. So you’re in line with a bunch of other officers and you all know why you’re all there. 😜
So we got out fast and had no errors. That makes me feel good.
@Virginicus Agreed. Speaking to Ms Hanley, she said of working in the general assembly: it’s the kiss of death on an initiative to say it’s being put forward by Fairfax. Everyone rolls their eyes. It’s an interesting story:
VA law says you can’t have a district bigger than 5000 voters. Fairfax has a lot of people, so lots of 2500-3500 voter precincts. But it also has a bunch of 1000-person precincts. Her expression was that the office of elections is “turning into a moving company” because of how many precincts we have and the amount of equipment we have to send to each. But we have to do things according to the law.
Thankfully, she said, Chesterfield County is running into something similar. So THEY can put forward a bill to get some changes and Fairfax can support them.
She wants to do bigger locations with more of the print-on-demand machines. A location might serve 3-5 precincts. You walk up, we figure out what precinct you’re in, and we print the ballot that you should have. This is what they do at the satellite early voting sites. They just want to do more of it and do it in larger precincts on election day. Sounds like a good idea to me. But it sounds like it requires a change to the law.
Paco Hope
Virginicus
it's B! Cavello 🐝