* *** POSTMORTEM_2014-07-15 TXT - 18 Jul 2014 23:17:30 - JKNAUTH Here is the 7/15/14-election postmortem report for Precinct 19-09, Rolesville Elementary School polling place. Comments on Voter Turnout -------- -- ----- ------- Except for the late afternoon rain, this was a very boring election day at 19-09 -- not much for the precinct officials to do during the day (i.e., to process actual voters), but a lot of work to do at Monday set-up and on Tuesday to open the polls, close the polls, pack up, etc. This was all to support a voter turnout which was almost non-existent. Of those who appeared, no one required Help Table assistance. Most voters were REP, although we had about ten who were UNA eligible to vote in the runoff. In summary 53 voters handled via the M100 1 absentee voter on our white list 0 pink list plus Tuesday morning call-in voters 0 provisional voters 0 voters flagged with a V or ID 0 name changes or address changes 0 voters transferred into or out of 19-09 0 curbside voters 0 2016 voter ID forms required/used We also had about six ineligible voters who had not realized this was only a Republican runoff. Almost all understood immediately and did not object when it was explained why they could not vote. As of 7/1/14 19-09 had 1509 registered REP voters and 1054 registered UNA voters. I don't know exactly how many of the UNA were eligible to vote on 7/15/14, i.e., voted REP in May or did not vote in May. Since less than 15% of all 19-09 voters voted in May, let's conservatively guess that about 80% of the UNAs could have voted on 7/15/14 if they chose to do so, i.e, around 800+. With that assumption, the total who could have voted in this election would be about 1500 REP + 800 UNA = about 2300 (or more). That results in the following ratio for 7/15/14: DID VOTE / COULD HAVE VOTED = 54 / 2300 = about 2% (a pretty dismal turnout, even considering the rain late in the day) Refresher Training PDF --------- -------- --- The Refresher Training PDF was very good. However, at least some of the flickr movies had some technical problems, e.g., the cell phone movie stuttered so much I couldn't watch it. I didn't try to look at most of the movies. Saturday Pick-up -------- ------- 1) The ballot box contents check was still done without any Chief Judge ability to verify its accuracy. I opened my trunk from within the car, then got out of the car. The ballot box was already being sealed by the time I got to the trunk area. I was not given the opportunity to see that what they wrote down as the contents count actually matched what was in the box. Yet I was still expected to sign for it. See my postmortem comments for the 5/6/14 election, http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Postmortem_2014-05-06.txt . 2) On the signoff sheet, the barcode scanner line was marked with a check as if I had received one, which I had not. I pointed this out to the person asking me to sign the sheet, noting that no one should be getting a barcode scanner for this election and that certainly none had been put in my trunk. She called someone else over, who straightened her out. They corrected the sheet and apologized for the mistake. However from what I heard, this probably had happened to others before me and their sheets had not been corrected. 3) This sort of operation makes me suspect the whole "chain of custody" signoff procedure. Monday Pick-up ------ ------- 1) The long "mommy line" was once again a problem at Harris Creek Elementary. Shortly before 4:30 it stretched out about 0.2 of a mile onto Forestville Rd. At least half a dozen CJs were caught in it. When I finally got near the front of the line and told one of the school personnel that I was doing a BOE pickup, she waved me on ahead into a second lane which became available in that area. I spent 10 or 15 minutes at the truck while they were finding my material. By the time I left, the mommy line had disappeared, so we seem to have hit it at a bad time. I still wish they wouldn't park the truck in the middle of all this. 2) The people at the truck had trouble finding my precinct's pollbooks box. Do they pre-sort these or are they put into the truck in random order? Electronics in the Voting Enclosure ----------- -- --- ------ --------- Although I understand the reason for the change to now allow using smart phones in voting booths to reference notes, it is going to be very hard for precinct officials to enforce that nothing else is being done with those phones (taking pictures, making calls, etc.) The electronics war is being lost by the BOE (refer to my many previous comments about trying to detect observers using wireless devices). Good luck to the BOE when voters and observers start showing up wearing Google Glass. It's going to get worse each year as devices become smaller, more capable, and less detectable. Equipment --------- 1) We had one foam sign without an H bar. We had to tape one foam sign whose H bar holes had started to break thru. 2) There were not enough cell phone signs for all the booths and for wall posting. I had to take one home Monday night and make some copies. 3) The metal A-frame sign with a small wheelchair symbol underneath the large "Parking" text can cause some confusion. It's supposed to direct people to the accessible parking area. However, because of our bus lot problem (gym parking area used only for curbside and accessible parking, not for other voters), we have to put this metal "Parking" sign at the lot entrance beside a foam sign that says "No Voter Parking". Unless you see the small wheelchair symbol as you are trying to negotiate S. Main St. traffic to find the polling place parking area, you might not be able to decode why "Parking" and "No Parking" are at the same entrance. Of course, many voters seem to ignore all the signs anyway and park in the gym lot, which is empty most of the day. For a diagram of the way we place our outdoor signs, see http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Rolesville_Elementary_Outdoor_Signs.pdf This is as best as I can remember it the day after the election; I'll correct it in November if necessary. Michael Trapp, our coordinator, has suggested that we might alter some of the signs at the gym lot entrance to say, "No Voter Parking between the Hours of: xxxx and xxxx". I'll see if we can come up with something along those lines. Since the bus hours are somewhat flexible (and are definitely different in the summer vs. the rest of the year), those signs should probably be something we can easily modify rather than having the times permanently printed like the rest of the sign text. 4) We had to open only one ballot pack. It did contain exactly 100 ballots. Parking in the Gym Lot (Bus Lot) ------- -- --- --- --- ---- ---- For this election the conflict between voter parking and bus parking was not a problem. There are far fewer buses used for Rolesville Elementary's summer school. However in November, the normal schedule will return and I have confirmed with our school contact that 11/4/14 will NOT be a school holiday. The expected large voter turnout will definitely collide with the parking lot that fills up with parked buses in the afternoon. We will need extra personnel to act as traffic control and handle the curbside and accessible areas that will have to be relocated while the buses are present. See my May postmortem report for more on this, http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Postmortem_2014-05-06.txt under "Polling Place". Weather ------- Heavy rain started around 4:15 and kept up for much of the rest of the time we were there. I had brought some old cloth towels to put on the floor at the enclosure entrance. We had paper towels for voters to dry their hands before getting a ballot and some plastic bags for various things, plus a sign about storing wet umbrellas before entering the voting enclosure. Fortunately the rain had let up a good deal by the time one of our people had to go around taking down all the outside signs. We tried to dry the signs before putting them in the gray supply bin. Documentation in Chief Judge Binder ------------- -- ----- ----- ------ See my comments under "Material Distributed at Supply Pickup" in http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Postmortem_2014-05-06.txt . Will the incident report and media writeups ever be fixed (items 4 and 5)? On 6/21/14 I had e-mailed Charlotte Mayo some comments on the Rolesville Elementary School yellow sheet. Those still apply to the sheet that was in the latest CJ binder. Jeff Knauth Chief Judge for Precinct 19-09