* *** POSTMORTEM_2009-10-06 TXT - 9 Oct 2009  11:21:34 - JKNAUTH

           Postmortem on 10/6/09 Election at Precinct 01-43
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The 10/6/09 election was pretty quiet at Precinct 01-43.  Here are some
comments.

1)  In contrast to the way other laptops have worked, the SOSA program
    did not start automatically when our laptop was booted.  I had to
    doubleclick on the SOSA icon on the desktop to start the program.  I
    notified our coordinator.  I suspect SOSA was just not in the
    Startup folder for some reason, but I didn't check.  Once the
    doubleclick was done, things appeared as they did in Appendix H and
    the laptop class.

2)  I once hit the backspace slowdown problem I had seen last year.  I
    rebooted and didn't see the problem again.

3)  We had one case where two ballots were stuck together and appeared
    as one.  The M100 caught it.  This had happened once last year.

4)  We opened two ballot packets.  Both contained 100 ballots.  Last
    year three of nine packets were one ballot short.

5)  The alarm on the scanner is so quiet that it is easily missed,
    especially if the room is noisy and someone isn't sitting right
    beside the scanner.

6)  The press-to-talk curbside speaker system is not as good as the
    previous doorbell system.  Despite the sign, people had a tendency
    to just push the button and immediately release it, as if it were a
    doorbell.  That results in a missed curbside alert.

7)  The colored flowcharts and provisional ballot 10-step chart (PTO
    class handouts) were hard to read.  Lighter colors should be used.
    The heavy, white, two-sided flowchart sheet distributed last year
    was very easy to use.

8)  We eventually had to partially obscure the Automark with a voting
    booth.  People had kept trying to use the Automark instead of the
    M100 to read their ballots.  This was despite the big sign, which
    was clearly visible.  Of course no one ever tried to use the
    Automark for its intended purpose.  In fact no one has ever used the
    Automark at our precinct to mark a ballot (eight elections?),
    although it is always set up and (probably too) easily accessible.

9)  At 01-43 we had several people come to our location from 02-04
    (which is *far* away).  The 02-04 precinct polling place was closed
    today since no elections applied there -- it is UNC and is district
    3 for the school board.  The people said a sign had told them to
    come to us.  I would be curious exactly what that sign said.  Were
    we the first obvious open polling place going south on Falls of
    Neuse in all those miles?

    Anyway we called the BOE to doublecheck why 02-04 wasn't available
    to these voters, as well as checking the laptop and seeing "No
    Ballot" and understanding what that meant from the laptop class.
    The voters understood the explanation and accepted it.  The mystery
    is why did they show up on our particular doorstep.  Or did many
    precincts get similar visitors who wanted to vote, didn't realize
    they had no elections to vote in, and just stopped in the first open
    polling place they found after seeing their normal polling place was
    closed?

10) Related to this, we had *many* valid 01-43 voters express surprise
    that there was no Board of Education race on the ballot in our
    precinct.  We explained that District 6 wouldn't have an election
    until 2011.  Given the great county-wide interest in the Board of
    Education elections this year, it isn't too surprising that people
    wanted to participate even though they couldn't and didn't realize
    it until they saw their ballot.  If people don't check their sample
    ballots before election day, or know which races apply to them, such
    problems are bound to occur.  At least people seemed to understand
    once it was explained.

11) Our Chief Judge said she found the checklists on the various bags
    to be very helpful, especially the EMC.


Jeff Knauth
Precinct 01-43