Election Poll Worker Training
Early this morning I went to poll worker training. It wasn’t too long (8am-10:30am). I took an oath, promised to uphold the constitution and so on. I took a couple of cool photos of the voter cards. I totally forgot to take pictures of the diebold machines. Apparently you can’t wear an Obama or McCain Tshirt, or any other candidates sign or voting slogan on public property within 150 feet of the door of the polling place. That should be interesting to manage 
Seems simple enough.
Made In China
Voter Access Card + Encoder
How these work is pretty basic. The voter card has nothing on it but the district (so it knows which ballot to show them, and it also includes instructions on font size, or if the machine should talk to them, etc — we program that in if they are blind, etc)
As a poll worker we keep a manual count of all the votes and check the counts at the end of the day (and mid day) to make sure the counts match. If they don’t we have to stay there till we figure out WTF went wrong. I learned all about cool provisional ballots and the laws and weird exceptions, like “curb-side” voting where they can’t get out of their car, due to age, etc. Needless to say I think I’ll be busy election day. 6am -> done. I always wanted to see how this part works, so this should be a good/fun experience. I’ll be rotating through various positions, with no lunch break and no dinner break (they warned us about that) as well as helping to take down the voting machines (and probably help set them up). So if your poll workers seem busy, it is cuz they are and they haven’t eaten much.
Edit: They called me late afternoon yesterday. Guess they were hard up for help…
Good job John. Just make sure every vote is counted no matter who they vote for. So frustrating reading about all these problems already.