* *** POSTMORTEM_2013-11-05 TXT - 9 Nov 2013 13:07:50 - JKNAUTH This was a very dull election at the 19-09 polling place, Rolesville Elementary. We had only 84 voters. The only Help Table activity was handling three unreported moves. There was only one curbside voter. We did have a number of people who came in and found they could not vote because they were in an unincorporated area, thus not eligible to vote for the Rolesville Board of Commissioners. No one complained after this was explained to them. Monday Pickup ------ ------ 1) The Harris Creek Elementary School pickup procedure was improved from October (see http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Postmortem_2013-10-08.txt), but could still be better. The truck seemed to have been moved a little further down the lane and thus was less mixed in with the "mommy line" cars than in October. (Or maybe just that there was no rain tent this time made it appear there was more BOE space.) However moving the truck even further down would be better. Also, explicitly reserving some BOE parking spaces near the truck would allow Chief Judge cars to better get out of the traffic flow. There are two lanes in front of the school. One, the one nearest the school building, is used by the "mommy line" and is also where the CJ cars end up by default. I realized this time that I could (legally?) get out of the "mommy line" and use the outer lane to jump ahead to the BOE truck. I was concerned about doing this near where all the children pickups were happening, but I didn't see any sign or school personnel saying it wasn't allowed. Of course when I did get to the truck I was faced with the parking problem. Staying in the lane meant blocking traffic and also prevented those already parked from getting out. Maybe there should be some BOE signs at the turn at the bottom of the hill to direct CJ cars out of the "mommy line" and to to some reserved parking near the BOE truck. Next time I will probably just pull ahead of the truck (even though they are handing out stuff from the back), and then walk back to do the pickup. Polling Place ------- ----- The Rolesville Elementary School gymnasium worked well as a polling place and we again had very good cooperation from the school personnel. However there are several problems. 1) The same noise, parking, and minor phone considerations applied as in October, but there were no show stoppers. Thru experience we are learning how to work with the bus situation, but it will definitely be a problem with a big election if we have more need for continuous curbside and accessible parking. I suspect we will also have to devote resources to chasing cars out of the bus lot at the restricted times of the day. We noticed that often people tended to park in the gym lot despite the No Parking signs. 2) Around mid-morning it seemed to get pretty chilly. Everyone put on coats or sweaters. We talked to our school contact to see if the temperature could be raised. Since this is now done from a central Wake County control center, it isn't as easy as just adjusting a thermostat in the room. Our contact said she would make an emergency request to the powers that be. The temperature seemed to improve a while later. M100 ---- 1) We had no unusual M100 events. After the "ELECTION CARD INSERTED, OPEN POLLS NOW?" message, the "YES" did appear in its proper place vs. what happened in October. Also we did not encounter any ballot rejects with undocumented error messages this time. All reports printed normally. 2) The tape said there was one write-in ballot and there was exactly one in the write-in bin. Our coordinator had asked that we watch out for this specifically since he had seen a mismatch in the previous election. AutoMARK -------- 1) When turned on Monday night, the AutoMARK displayed a message about a missing ink cartridge. We followed directions from the BOE to power off the machine, reseat the cartridge, and power it on again. That solved the problem. In fact the cartridge was found to be very loose. Our coordinator later told us several of his other polling places had reported exactly the same problem Monday. Apparently the machines were roughly handled during storage or delivery, or else between elections the cartridges were removed and not properly reinserted. I had seen this AutoMARK problem only one other time in the nearly 20 elections I have set up those machines. Signs ----- 1) Our polling place has some special laminated signs related to the bus parking lot problem. This is the first time I have dealt with them. We had some problems inserting the frame wires into the thin foam layer between the sign faces. It would have been helpful if some pilot holes had been drilled. Curbside Speaker -------- ------- 1) Still poor. It's almost impossible to understand what is said, or even to reliably know that something is being said. Documentation, Packing Up, Statistics -------------- ------- --- ---------- 1) Where are the completed checklists and the "M100 vs. ATV" log sheet supposed to be packed? I ended up just putting them in the CJ binder. 2) It would have been nice to know what the maximum number of voters could have been for this election. I couldn't find any place where this is documented. We know the number for the whole 19-09 precinct (close to 3900), but this election was for only the Rolesville incorporated part for the precinct. Moreover, Rolesville (population about 4300? with registered voters being probably less than half of that?) is split across three precincts (19-09, 19-10, and 19-04). We were given 1300 ballots. I assume that must be close to the maximum, which I am sure the BOE can calculate pretty well by counting the filtered database entries: registered voters in 19-09 living in Rolesville. As noted above, we used only 84 of the 1300 ballots. 3) In the poll book box there are instructions for handling the white and pink lists. One says "Place 1 copy of the White List at the Help Table." Shouldn't this say "Pink List" instead of "White List"? If I understand correctly (see http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/White_and_Pink_Lists.htm), the white list contains the names of ALL voters who have voted absentee (I include early voting in the term "absentee") up to the point when that list was finalized the Sunday before the election. Most of those voters are already flagged on the laptop as VOTED; only those in the small pink list portion are not so flagged. Why have the Help Test people have to wade thru the full white list each time instead of using the much more focused pink list? For a big election in a large precinct the white list can have hundreds or even thousands of names. 4) See my documentation comments in http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Postmortem_2013-10-08.txt. Ballot Packs ------ ----- 1) The one pack we opened did contain exactly 100 ballots! Boredom ------- 1) As noted above, this was a pretty boring day for the 19-09 polling place. As I have requested before, when it is known that there will be light turn out (e.g., a basically uncontested election, as this was, or a primary runoff for an office with little voter interest, etc.), isn't there SOMETHING productive the BOE could do with these paid, knowledgeable, willing, sworn workers? Saying the time could be used for re-reading the manual goes only so far. Doesn't the BOE have anything that these people might help with? They could be productive and also not climbing the walls for a dozen+ hours. Jeff Knauth Chief Judge for Precinct 19-09