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San Diego election stations incur ignorance, apathy, and irregularities

By Walter G. Meyer

June 19, 2006

San Diego--“No, you can’t vote for Busby or Bilbray.”

“But I want to!”

Such was the frustrating exchange that was repeated often on election day. One of the banes of being an election official is dealing with ignorance. Some voters who didn’t live in the 50^th Congressional District nonetheless felt that after listening to the annoying Busby and Bilbray television commercials for so many weeks that they should be allowed to vote for one of the two candidates.

As a friend of mine who also worked the election explained, “If you are a member of Lions’ Club, they won’t let you vote for president of Optimists. The parties are different clubs. You are Republican; the Democrats don’t have to let you vote in their primary.”

For over 20 years I have worked in polling places most election days. When I started doing it, it was pretty much volunteer work—we were paid a negligible amount—but nowhere near the $125 we now receive. (Given the long hours, that still works out to far less than minimum wage—you do this job out of a sense of community service, not a desire for wealth.)

Because of the long hours and low pay, it’s difficult for the county elections board to find competent people to work the polls. Many of the people with whom I have worked over the years were so ancient or out of it that they can’t see the index. Where I used to serve in Venice, California, the elderly couple that hosted the polls in their living room liked to say they had been sleeping together for over 80 years. When they were infants in North Dakota, their parents would put them to sleep in each other’s cribs while the adults played cards. They grew up to fall in love and had been married for over 60 years. It was a sweet story, but neither of them still possessed the faculties to be doing the detail work of running an election.

Some less educated—or perhaps, less enlightened—volunteers have a hard time remaining impartial. Last year, one of my fellow workers felt the need to tell each voter to support the Mt. Soledad Cross in spite of my many reminders that it was a violation of election law to attempt to influence anyone’s vote in a polling place. He was the one in charge and refused to heed my cautions or refrain from racist and homophobic comments about voters. He also refused to count the ballots or balance the tallies after the polls closed.

Bureaucracy also crops up among the corps of volunteers. When I worked the fall election, the person in charge took a two-hour break during the dinner rush and refused to work the table, saying her job was just to supervise. I’ve also worked with someone who insisted it was her job to slide everyone’s ballot into the scanner, refusing to use the privacy sleeve. (Election staff are not supposed to be close enough to the scanner to even see what’s on anyone’s ballot.)

It’s not hard to see why many of the poll workers are confused or in the wrong: The training leaves much to be desired. Given the importance that should be placed on voting in a democracy, it would be nice if the people in charge had some idea of what they were doing. At the training I attended, we were told to discourage touchscreen voting. The other poll that shared our site had been told to encourage it. Some workers had been told that any voter could have any ballot they wanted regardless of party affiliation.

Another annoyance is voter apathy. A Filipino woman I worked with in Venice said that the first time she got to vote after the fall of the Marcos regime she literally braved gunfire to make it to the polls, running from car to car dodging bullets fired by a sniper down the block. She was stunned that in Venice, where everyone lived within easy walking distance of the poll and no one had ever been shot trying to get there, so few bothered to vote.

This past election, a woman from Lebanon yelled at us saying that she grew up in Lebanon when you couldn’t vote and that she has been a U.S. citizen for 15 years and has never missed voting. She scolded us saying we should be ashamed by the low turnout. None of us took her scolding personally since clearly she meant to chastise the many who were absent, not us few who were present.

A young man I met at our training was taking time out from his hectic job at a startup bio-tech company. It was encouraging to see someone so young taking time from his busy schedule to make the effort, but he was even more discouraged than I was by the quality of the volunteers and the appallingly low voter turnout at his precinct in Pacific Beach. He asked me what I thought we could do to get better quality in terms of voters and election staff. I told him I wish I knew.

One thing—it would be nice if more people in their twenties would step up and get as involved as he did. Besides doing his community service, he also saw it as a social opportunity and chance to meet people. That’s how I view it as well. I have become friendly with many neighbors just from signing them in to vote. Among those I had met over the table at my local precinct in the Venice section of L.A.: Ed O’Neill, better known as Al Bundy of Married with Children, which was still on the air at the time; Matt Groening, creator of the The Simpsons; Jack Tatum, the former Raider; Joe DiMaggio’s brother; and Ira Gershwin’s son.

So, get out and volunteer. You never know who you might meet. In spite of the annoyances, I am sure when the county calls this fall, I’ll say yes.

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Walter G. Meyer is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Vyuz.com.