* *** POSTMORTEM_2013-10-08 TXT - 11 Oct 2013 00:21:44 - JKNAUTH This election went pretty smoothly at precinct 19-09. Most of the officials had much experience, although some not at this polling place in recent years. Monday Pickup ------ ------ 1) The Harris Creek Elementary School pickup station was not well placed. It was right in the car line used by parents to pick up their children. At 4:00 PM it was a real mess because Chief Judges' cars were in the same line with 100 parents' cars which eventually wound around to the front of the building where the BOE station (truck and tent) and the children's pickup stations were placed right together. The school personnel kept having to wave the CJ cars out of the line that ended at the BOE station and directing them to go park in visitor spaces. You then had to go to the BOE station to get the supplies and carry them back to your car. And it was raining, hard. The BOE station should have been several hundred feet further down the driveway if it had to be in front of the school building. That area was clear. Unfortunately moving the truck and tent after the problems started was probably not possible. Also, another way of reaching it should be used instead of having to go thru the "mommy line". I assume some time well after 4:00 PM this problem would cease to exist because all the kids had been picked up, but most set-up times require an early pickup to allow people to drive back to the polling places. Polling Place ------- ----- The Rolesville Elementary School gymnasium worked pretty well as a polling place and we had very good cooperation from the school personnel. However there are several problems. 1) Twice a day the gym parking lot gets almost completely filled with buses, particularly in the afternoon. (I have some pictures if you need to see what I am talking about.) We had set up signs to steer voters away from that lot, directing them to the main school lot. However the gym parking lot is where we had to put our curbside and accessible parking areas. While the buses were using the lot we had to take down the curbside and accessible parking signs. A precinct official had to stand at the door and watch to see if anyone came looking for that sort of parking. Fortunately we had only one curbside voter this small election. The yellow information sheet for Rolesville Elementary has some confusing words about parking. It needs to be reviewed and edited. 2) The (non-dedicated?) BOE phone connection is far away from where the Help Table and M100 need to be located. A 100-foot phone cord is required and was provided by the BOE. We even had to extend that to reach the M100 at the end of the day. Possibly because of this there was much static during Help Table phone conversations. However the M100 seemed to do its end-of-day transmission OK. 3) The gym's HVAC system is very loud. This exacerbates the problem of trying to listen for the M100's very soft alarm beeps and to hear phone conversations. There were also frequent loud PA announcements and tones. Several of the long-time Rolesville precinct officials mentioned possible other polling places they had suggested in past years. M100 ---- 1) When we started the M100 (#220), at the point where you see the "ELECTION CARD INSERTED, OPEN POLLS NOW?" message, there is usually a line below it with just a "YES" positioned above the appropriate button (the rightmost button). The "YES" did not appear on our M100; there was just a blank line (actually gray character boxes). We pushed the appropriate button and things proceeded normally. We reported this to our coordinator. Later in the day we did see other things displayed on that second line, so the hardware may be OK. This was after a reboot, however (see below). 2) Several times during the day ballots were rejected, but not for the normal user marking errors. At least once a "sensor blocked" message was displayed. Reinserting the ballot firmly seemed to correct the situation. 3) As noted above (and often in prior reports), the M100's quiet alarm beeps may not be detected until too late -- the voter is already out the door. 4) When we did the CLOSE POLLS on the M100, it automatically printed the first report. However when we looked at it, we saw there were actually two reports on the tape, timestamped one second apart. Each seemed complete; each with the three lines for judge signatures. (We signed both places to be safe.) However there was only one "MODEM OPERATION COMPLETED" message; it was after the second report. The complete tape, from the zero report thru the "modem operation complete" message (including the redundant report), is what went into the blue bag. Following this double report, we then pushed RESULTS REPORT twice to get the reports for the purple envelope and the wall posting. Those other reports seemed to come out normally. I now strongly suspect that the double report was because of an error I made early in the process. In the Chief Judge Quick Guide, there is a line saying "Insert the red key into the AutoMARK and turn the key to 'Off.'" Instead I turned the *M100* key to 'Off' and kept on following the QG procedure, not realizing the mistake. When we got to the step saying turn the key to OPEN/CLOSE POLLS, the M100 rebooted properly and then displayed the line with the CLOSE POLLS button displayed. We continued to follow the procedure and things proceeded normally except for the double report described above. While this was going on I mentioned to the other Judges that I did not recall seeing a reboot in past elections. I didn't realize my mistake until after I got home and compared 2013 and 2012 documentation to see whether a reboot had occurred previously. In fact I was the one who had the BOE add the line in 2013 about turning off the Automark. We always forgot to do that before starting the M100 work, thus preventing other people from taking down the AutoMARK until the M100 work was done. The added line should stay in the Quick Guide, but maybe should be "Insert the red key into the AutoMARK (*NOT INTO THE M100*) and turn the key to 'Off.' Then remove the key." 5) We had only 497 voters, so fell short of having to open the ballot box during the day to remove ballots. When we did open the bin at the end of the day, we saw the ballots had fallen to the bottom pretty much as desired. One apparently had stood up early in the day, but then got crumpled as others fell on it. Likely we could have easily taken hundreds more ballots without a jam. 6) Fortunately the rain we had was pretty light and did not lead to any wet ballot problems. We had towels available in case voters needed to dry off before touching ballots. Curbside Speaker -------- ------- 1) The curbside speaker sound is really unintelligible. This combined with the school's PA system once made the curbside official believe for a long time he was hearing an open mike on the PA instead of someone trying to speak on the curbside speaker. Documentation ------------- 1) Having separate checklists for each position worked well. 2) See the above comment about adding a warning in the Chief Judge Quick Guide to prevent M100/AutoMARK red key mistakes. 3) The checklist on the white bag explicitly says "white ATVs" in several places. However yellow ATVs also go in this bag; they are on the rings just like white ATVs. The manual and Quick Guide correctly say "ATVs", not "white ATVs". 4) Help Table QG: Flow Chart #2: Fix the pink list bug noted in http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/2013_October_Flow_Chart_2_Comment.txt 5) Blue bag checklist: I was sorry to see that the warning list of red/blue key uses (M100, voting box doors, AutoMARK) had been deleted here, although there are separate reminders in other checklists. 6) Inconsistent numbers are shown for when to empty the ballot bin: 500 (CJ QG and manual) vs. 600-700 (M100 User Guide). 7) Chief Judge Quick Guide, Page 1: Add the Chief Judge binder (has the keys, etc.) to what should not be left at the polling place overnight. 8) Chief Judge Quick Guide, Page 1: Must the oath be read out loud to administer it? Twice in fact. Shouldn't the required signatures be adequate? 9) Chief Judge Quick Guide, Page 1: In fact the precinct number was already printed on the purple envelope and the Reconciliation form. However, it did need to be added to the CJ QG form, as stated. 10) Chief Judge Quick Guide, Page 1, description of White List at bottom: It's incomplete. The white list also includes the names of most of the voters who voted after the pollbooks were printed (the pink list names). It just does not include the "Tuesday call-in" names. 11) Chief Judge Quick Guide, Page 1, description of Pink List at bottom: This list does not include the "Tuesday call-in" names. 12) There is a minor spacing problem on the Reconciliation Form between items 6 and 7. 13) Don't forget the comments I made in http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/2013-09-02_Comments_on_Manual_and_Quick_Guides.txt Ballot Packs ------ ----- 1) In contrast to past years, each of the six ballot packs we opened contained exactly 100 ballots. 2) The 19-09 ballot count reconciliation sheet for 10/8/13 is posted at http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Ballot_Count_Reconciliation_2013-10-08.htm General (to the NC BOE, I guess) ------- 1) Somewhere it would be helpful to specify the postage stamps required to mail an absentee ballot. Two first-class stamps are required. A single first class stamp (now 46 cents) plus a normal oversize/overweight stamp (now 20 cents) is not adequate, even though the large envelope weighs less than one ounce. Apparently the absentee envelope is considered super-oversized. Having the required postage specified on the envelope itself ("two first-class stamps required") would save some delays and possibly lost votes. Jeff Knauth Chief Judge for Precinct 19-09