This account was written by an Election Integrity Activist and forwarded to me. I'm posting it because it provides excellent insight into vote counting process and the need for patience as returns begin to be processed.
Sunday night report from Absentee Ballot Precinct.
About 4 p.m. Jan, the Presiding Judge of the Absentee Precinct, authorized the ES&S employee, who was there from 10 a.m., to start running paper ballots through the ES&S machine. They had about 6,000 ballots (of the 40,000 in hand) ready to be scanned. ES&S apparently had told her that the machine could count 300 ballots a minute, so she expected the 6,000 ballots to be counted in less than a half hour.
After more than two hours had passed, the machine had "counted" roughly 1,200 ballots, twice, each time arriving at a different number of ballots recorded, and on the second pass through kicking out several additional "over vote" ballots that it apparently had missed--and counted?--the first pass through. (Actually, what probably happened was the newly discovered over-votes had been the ballots that stopped the machine earlier but instead of removing the over-vote ballot, an un-flawed ballot, that had been counted, had been removed and placed in the "hand-tally" stack, which means it would be counted twice. This is a mechanical problem--the machine shoots ballots out into a bin, and often a ballot is shot under other ballots already in the bin--that requires a remedy.
The plan is to run those same 1200 ballots through the machine again--a third time--to see what numbers come up and to try to better understand what the machine is doing and not doing.
One of the reasons it is taking so long is that the machine stops dead when it scans a faulty ballot. The faulty ballots have been put into four categories: "blank" or "over-vote" or "write-in" or "torn/bent. The machine runs anywhere between 3 and 30 ballots before it stops, when the machine operator has to remove the faulty ballot, then re-start the machine. Happily, the second time a batch of ballots is put through the machine, minus the ones it rejected earlier, it does approach the 300/minute speed.
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However, at this rate, counting however many of the 56,000-plus absentee ballots that were sent out finally are returned--some 46,000-plus have been received as of today--will take a long time, and I strongly urge the Democratic Party to start setting the media's expectations, all the more so that they don't jump down Mary Herrera's throat and/or blame the paper ballots for the delay. If we're to do this correctly and accurately, it will just take time, and it requires fresh minds as well.
It is my observation and opinion that what is being asked of the poll workers who are at the Absentee Precinct is inappropriate in that they are not told how long they will be expected/required to work, and they have been "warned" that they may be required to work into the night, at the whim of the Presiding Judge. My sense is that most of them are pretty timid and not likely to openly resist. On Friday and Saturday, the process was stopped at 5 p.m. Today, Sunday, it was announced that they "may be required to work longer" with no estimate of how much longer. In the end, they were allowed to leave at 5 p.m. while the judges and challengers stayed on until about 6:30 to try to understand what the machine was doing.
It is clear to me that the poll workers are exhausted by 5 p.m. Many of them are older citizens. The tasks they are doing are pretty mind-numbing---The first group of workers types or scans the return address bar code from the outer envelope into computers. A second group tears flaps from the outside envelope to disclose the voter signature. A third group of workers is asked to slide the outer envelopes through an electric envelope opener. A fourth group removes the inner envelope from the outer envelope. A fifth group opens the inner envelope and removes the ballot. The poll workers in each of these five groups are doing mind-numbing, repetitive tasks.
Beginning Monday there will be a 6th group added, being teams of four to hand- tally the rejected ballots. The plan is to have a Democrat read the ballots, a Republican mark the vote (or vice versa) with a Republican watching over the shoulder of the reader and a Democrat watching over the shoulder of the marker. This task is not mind-numbing, but it will be exacting and stressful. The presiding judge said she wants to create 10 such teams of four, which would require 40 poll workers, equal numbers from each of the parties. The poll workers who are asked to do this task need to be robust, energetic people who are not intimidated by numbers or challengers' questions and comments.
In my view, an 8 hour day for the poll workers is more than enough. Asking them to work longer is not only tiresome for the workers, it is a way to practically guarantee that errors will be made. We also need to make it clear that workers can sign up for 4 hour shifts rather than 8 hours, but I suggest that if we guaranteed no more than 8 hours a day, we'd have an easier time finding adequate numbers of poll workers.
It is my sense that on Monday and, especially on Tuesday, the poll workers will be expected/required to work substantially more than 8 hour days. I cannot say how strongly I feel that this should not be allowed to occur.
As far as I can tell the pressure to count the vote quickly comes primarily from candidates and from the media. It is my recommendation that the Secretary of State, County Clerk and both political parties join together to tell candidates and the media that they will be given the vote results, when they receive the vote results, which will never be on election day and may take up to a week thereafter. ("Election Day" should be relabeled as "the last day on which a vote can be cast and the day before vote counting starts" to help rearrange everyone's expectations. Poll workers should be assured that they will be asked to work only from 8 to 5, with an hour for lunch, that they may sign-up for 4 hour shifts instead of 8 hour shifts, and that the work will continue however many days it takes to completely, competently, andaccurately count the votes. (I note that one of Karl Rove's favorite and most over-used sick tricks is chaos. The idea of instant vote results is virtually guaranteed to produce chaos.) The television people will just have to find some other way to fill the 24-hour-news-cycle on the 1st Tuesdays in November. This tradition of counting the ballots on election night until the votes are all counted was all well and good at the turn of THE LAST century, when there were roughly 160 million fewer of us, and we were spread out in small towns and rural communities. In our 2006, 300-million population U.S.A., it's time to be far more deliberative about this stuff we call democracy.
That said, we've been told that there will be no more than 6 challengers from each party allowed in the Absentee Precinct on Monday and Tuesday. The Presiding Judge has sounded a warning that working "late" Monday is likely to be demanded. She has stated that on Tuesday, workers will be required to work "into the wee hours."
As you know Monday and Tuesday is when the hand tallying is to occur, and it is in hand-tallying that challenges to individual ballots and voter intent will come into play. If the machine keeps doing what it's been doing, it looks to be rejecting as much as 25 percent of the absentee ballots. Given that voter suppression seems to be the name of the Republican game, that puts 14,000 absentee ballots at risk. (The absentee ballots requested and returned are roughly 50/50 Rep. Dem.)
Long story short, we need more Democratic poll workers, even if they will only commit to 4 hour shifts, and we need more challengers for the Tuesday 6 a.m to 3 p.m. shift. We can probably make do with the four of us from 3 p.m. to midnight Tuesday, although having our allotted six would be better. As for what happens after midnight, I'm at a loss.
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