* *** POSTMORTEM_2020-11-03 TXT - 9 Nov 2020 02:04:56 - JKNAUTH Postmortem Report for Precinct 19-19 for 11/3/2020 Election ---------- ------ --- -------- ----- --- -------- -------- > SUMMARY < ======= The voter turnout was fairly low in this general election since most registered voters had already voted, either at an early voting (one-stop) site or by mail-in absentee. The weather was very good, although chilly in the morning. There were no significant problems of any sort on Election Day. This was the sixth election at the Sanford Creek Elementary School (SCES) polling place. By now we had pretty well figured out how to handle this site; however COVID-19 considerations required some significant changes. > STATISTICS < ========== The calculations below use the number of voters registered as of 11/2/20. The turnout for this primary election was about 8.4% at the polling place and 74.6% via absentee voting (mail-in or one-stop) for a total of about 83.0% of registered voters, clearly a huge number. Tabulator vs. ATV counts: 612 vs. 612 Provisional ballots: 16 Spoiled ballots: 8 Emergency bin ballots: 0 Challenged ballots: 0 Curbside voters: 16 AutoMARK voters: 0 Observers: 2 (2 Precinct-Specific Observers) (0 At-Large Observers) Registered voters: 7244 (as of 11/02/20) Monday-list absentees: 5353 (the long list in Pollbook box #1) Last-minute absentees: 54 (the short list gotten from the website) ---- Total absentees: 5407 Voting booths: 14 (including 2 provisional and 1 accessible) Total chairs at tables: 4 (at 4 square 42" tables) -- Total "booths" 18 Ballot Count Reconciliation web page: http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Ballot_Count_Reconciliation_2020-11-03.htm > STAFFING < ======== We had fifteen Officials assigned to 19-19 at the end of August. The initial list remained the same all thru September. All Officials were contacted, some with difficulty because of the spam filter problem described below. When October arrived, the dropouts and transfers began. Nine people either dropped out or were transferred to another precinct. Some of the dropouts/transfers were themselves replacements of people who had previously dropped out or been transferred. Each replacement had to be contacted (often not easy because of the spam filter problem) and brought up to speed, but then sometimes they dropped out or were transferred. Meanwhile, assignment plans had to be adjusted over and over. Much churning and wasted time. One Official was assigned just the Sunday before election. Another was a no-show at Monday Setup and Election Day (there was no notice that this was going to happen). Our final replacement was assigned on Election Day itself and came later in the morning. All this made planning difficult. Fortunately, all those in the final crew were extremely good and we had just enough people to cover all the required positions. I have been told by the Staffing Team that they had a record number of dropouts to contend with this election -- definitely not an easy job. Because of COVID-19 concerns, many of the usual Wake County Precinct Officials decided not to work in this election. Many of those who did volunteer to work had little or no prior election experience and definitely none at our polling place. Only four of the final thirteen had worked at Sanford Creek Elementary School (SCES) in prior elections. Five had not ever been a Precinct Official. Three others had worked as a Precinct Official in just one prior election. Fortunately, many of the Officials had worked at an early voting site a few days before, so had gained a lot of experience there which largely applied to Precinct Official tasks; this was very helpful. > SPAM FILTERING PROBLEM < ==== ========= ======= I sent an introductory email with some important information to my initial set of assignees and to all the subsequent replacements. I got no response for *seven* of those. When I finally timed out (usually several days after sending the email to someone) and called the non-responding assignee, they said they hadn't received my email. They then looked in their spam folder and found it there. That caused a lot of wasted time and effort. I notified the BOE about this problem and proposed a solution. The Staffing Team should put the CJ's email address in the assignment letter or transfer notification and tell the recipient to be sure that address is on the "whitelist" so emails from it are not treated as spam. > AIRTABLE REPORTS < ======== ======= I very much like the secure posting of detailed Airtable reports for CJs. The CJs can then see the latest assignee list together with each assignee's contact information. The timeliness of that information is very important. However Airtable seems to have some significant printing problems, at least in my attempts to do prints: Originally I could not filter the full list to just my precinct and print only that one precinct. Airtable tried to print all precincts, ignoring the filtering. That was solved when the Staffing Team came up with a secure way to provide a page containing just my precinct, including contact information for the assigned Officials. However printing of it still had problems: 1) The landscape setting is ignored. 2) There is no print preview. 3) There is no way to save/print to a pdf file. 4) Maybe more, e.g., printing only the fields of interest -- I couldn't get far enough to test that much. The formatting left much to be desired. I finally gave up and just used Windows Snip & Sketch to grab part of the filtered display and then to print it. The print resolution wasn't too good, but at least I could get a hardcopy. > POLLING PLACE SETUP AND PRE-ELECTION PREPARATIONS < ======= ===== ===== === ============ ============ 1) Because of our room dimensions, we were able to set up a large number of voting booths. We used fourteen standard booths, which included two provisional booths and one ADA booth. Behind one row of standard booths we also had four small tables, each with a chair; they were also used as voting "booths". All the standard and table booths were arranged to keep the voters socially distanced, six feet apart. We had an early morning rush, which made good use of all the booths. At that time we had a line which filled up our Disney line and continued on outside the Voting Enclosure. However once this rush passed, the voter flow was moderate for the rest of the day and we had no big line build up because of booth unavailability. Our general voting enclosure configuration is shown in http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Sanford_Creek_Elementary_Layout_3RT_measure.pdf The number and spacing of the "booths" is not shown exactly in the diagram. 2) The sidewalk area leading up to the Media Center is very dark at night. The existing lights are for the parking lot and are far away. This is a problem for November elections, less so for spring elections when it is still fairly light at poll closing time. The darkness makes it harder for voters to find the Voting Enclosure door, which is around a corner. In this election most of our "Vote Here" arrow signs were surrounded by many campaign signs. One of our Officials has noted that this area needs some additional lighting. If the school or BOE cannot provide it, I'll try to come up with something, at least a way to light a final "Vote Here" sign where you round the corner to get to the door. 3) Well before the election I posted an information article on NextDoor to warn people about some SCES idiosyncrasies and other things. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Nextdoor_Posts_for_2020-11-03.txt . It references two other web pages, my "Information Mainly for Precinct 19-19 Voters" page, now archived for this election as http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/19-19_2020-11-03.htm , and a page with information more specific to this election, "Information about Current (11/3/2020) Election", http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Current_Election_2020-11-03.htm . > REGISTRATION TABLE < ============ ===== 1) COVID-19 social distancing requirements caused some changes from our standard setup. We used only three Registration Table (RT) Officials in this election instead of four. We put a small table between two long ones to serve as a combined, very long RT table. There was a table shield in front of each RT Official. All this allowed us to keep the RT Officials well separated from each other on one side of the table and the voters well separated from each other on the other side and the Officials separated from the voters. It also provided space for the Officials to work with their binders and ATVs as well as provided space for the voters to write on the ATVs. 2) Because we had only a small number of people still eligible to vote, all the pollbook pages fit in three binders, one per RT Official. There were no problems setting up these with pages evenly divided among the three binders. 3) We used the same file jacket technique in this election as in the last one to allow larger letters on the RT signs. The RT waiting lines are pretty far from the RT, so having large letters makes them easier to see from the RT waiting lines. 4) The front of the RT waiting lines was marked with blue tape, which held up fairly well since the tape was long, not exposing the ends to scuffing; we replaced it only once. We originally used blue tape for the short markers for social distancing. However during setup we quickly found that the short pieces of blue tape did not stick to the carpet for very long; the ends came loose quickly, followed by the rest of the strip. We switched to masking tape for these short markers, both inside and outside; that held up very well. 5) Because of COVID-19 and the possibility of large surges of voters, we had some additional Officials in this election. The Door Monitor restricted access when the Voting Enclosure was full; this happened only in the early morning. He gave out pens and masks and directed voters to the Disney line. Our Line Monitor made sure social distancing was maintained and then directed voters to the proper waiting line based on the first letter of their last name. Initially we had to use the full length of the Disney line. When the surge stopped, we made a shortcut to the RT waiting lines. All this worked very well. > BALLOT TABLE < ====== ===== We did not expect any big BT waiting lines in this election vs. what we had in March. The single ballot style made BT processing much simpler and faster. Nevertheless we set up a small BT waiting area where we could (and did) occasionally stack a few people, socially distanced. We also put our Observer chairs in that general area beside out HT waiting area. > HELP TABLE < ==== ===== 1) We had two HT Officials, two laptops, and two provisional booths, so we were able to process two voters in parallel. 2) There was one very interesting case the HT handled from curbside. A voter marked "Confidential" had moved to our precinct from another precinct, but had not notified the BOE of the move. Since the old address was confidential, not all the data to do normal processing was available to the HT Official. She and the Help Line person (to whom this was also an unknown situation) finally worked out a way to handle things with the provisional envelope. The BOE needs to tell people needing confidential addresses what they must do if they change their address. Presumably this would not be handled by the normal process that other voters use. Getting this sorted out on Election Day required a lot of time from HT and Curbside Officials. Since this was a curbside voter, the HT Official and the voter were not in direct communication, which made things more difficult. None of the people involved, except the voter, knew anything about confidential addresses, so there was a lot of on-the-spot learning to resolve this. 3) We learned that one of our HT Officials had not initialed a precinct transfer ATV. This was later corrected when the voter returned to get the initials. 4) Our HT Officials also caught that an incorrect ATV box had been marked by an Official in another precinct when we got the inbound transfer. The voter was eventually allowed to vote in our precinct. > CURBSIDE PROCESSING < ======== ========== 1) As in the previous election we used masking tape on the driveway asphalt to make direction arrows for the curbside area. That holds up well and is very visible. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Sanford_Creek_Elementary_Curbside_Parking.pdf 2) Because this was a teacher workday, there was no carpool line to interfere with curbside parking. Still some people missed or chose to ignore the direction arrows and signs, ending up parked the wrong way. For the next election we will develop some additional signs to put by the curbside area entrance. 3) We had a fairly large number of curbside voters this election (16) and used two Curbside Officials when needed. One car had four curbside voters inside. Our Curbside Officials acted as Booth Monitors when not working curbside. 4) Most curbside processing was very standard. We did have at least one where considerable Help Table processing was required. See above about the confidential address change. 5) We had one case where a curbside voter had been partially processed by another precinct before they realized he actually resided in our precinct. However they gave him the partially filled out ATV (no label) to take to us. We just marked it void and started fresh with a new ATV and processed the voter normally. > VOTING BOOTHS < ====== ====== 1) Because we were able to set up a number of voting booths, we never ran into the problem of having to stop everything to wait until the current set of voters marking ballots finished that long process. We know that had been a significant problem at some early voting sites. 2) We had Booth Monitors dedicated to directing voters to an empty booth (or table), cleaning the area after the voter left, and directing the voter to the Tabulator, which is a long distance away and around a bend. Doing all this was a big job. Fortunately we were able to use our two Curbside Officials to help our main Booth Monitor when there was no curbside work. 3) The Officials managing the booths were also a big help when it came time to check if the ATV count and Tabulator count were in sync. That involved counting the "floating somewhere between the BT and Tabulator" ballots in a large and complicated area. We did that check frequently, catching and correcting a few problems, and making the end-of-day accounting very easy. > TABULATOR < ========= 1) We had no Tabulator problems this time -- not at setup, during the day, or at takedown. With the small number of voters, we did not have to empty the bin before poll closing. When we did empty it at closing, we found all the ballots had stacked neatly in the blue box. 2) Our Tabulator Monitor was helpful with each voter, showing them where to insert the ballot and telling them to wait for the beep. We had no runaway voters because they all waited as directed. 3) We had surprisingly few errors for this complicated ballot -- only a few overvotes (too many items marked in a contest) or mismarked ballots (ovals not filled in correctly). > AUTOMARK < ======== We had no AutoMARK users, but almost had one. I made a mistake in that process. A lady with impaired vision was not able to read the ballot using the WCBOE magnifying glass. We offered her the AutoMARK; however she decided it would be too complicated for her. She said she had glasses in her car. I walked her out to the car to get the glasses, which she then used successfully to mark her ballot. A couple of days later I realized I should not have allowed her to exit and reenter the voting enclosure since she had already been issued a ballot. I had held onto her ballot while she exited/reentered. > AUDITS OF ATVS AND PROVISIONAL ENVELOPES < ====== == ==== === =========== ========= 1) On the whole our RT Officials did a very good job. we found a few errors early in the day and talked to the Officials about those. This was expected with people new to precinct Election Official work. 2) I was able to check many of the provisional envelopes, but not those at the end of the day. I did not see any serious problems. I had strongly emphasized the need to follow the flowcharts and all the HT Officials seemed to be doing that. > RECONCILIATION PROCESS < ============== ======= 1) Reconciliation went very quickly in this election. Having a single ballot style makes this much easier to handle. We were very careful all day to ensure that the ATV and Tabulator numbers stayed in sync. Our Ballot Table Official had all the needed information ready when it was time to fill out the Reconciliation Form. Both the ATV vs. Tabulator and the ballot inventory checks were passed. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Ballot_Count_Reconciliation_2020-03-03.htm 2) For poll closing I assigned one person to coordinate the packing up. She also prepared the input for the Reconciliation Form. The intent for both of these was to have organized work being done while the three judges were tied up doing all their poll-closing items and were less available to direct the other officials. That all worked very well. > FORMS < ===== 1) It appears the same ATV form was used in this election as had been used in March. We and the voters were just supposed to ignore all the party-related parts. We did and so did the voters -- for the most part; some marked their party anyway in the gray section. That form has some major problems, which I described in detail in the postmortem for the 3/3/20 election. Hopefully the form will be corrected before the next partisan primary. 2) The new Airtable paysheet has no way to indicate absence from Monday setup vs. the previous paysheet and what the CJ Pocket Guide still implies. 3) As usual BT Officials forget that the back of the ATV/Tabulator sheet is to be used for recording curbside voters. They typically tape that sheet to their table, hiding the back, even if they have seen the Quick Guide reminder about the need for the curbside recording. They then forget the form on the back of the sheet. I wish there were just another form for recording curbside counts. 4) I had made some comments on the Polling Place Report in the CJ Binder. Tiana sent me a revised Airtable version. I sent her an email with comments on that as well. > CAMPAIGNERS/OTHERS < ================== 1) The campaigners seemed to be pretty well behaved, at least those I monitored, who were down near the building. The rest were up on the hill. There were many more campaigners and campaign signs than in previous elections at SCES. Only a couple of times did I have to warn people to stay out of the zoned area; I think it was just that they were new to the process. At the end of the day they did a very good sign cleanup. The next day I found only a single campaign sign; it was at the extreme end of the school property. I moved it down to the street where there were a couple of other orphan signs. 2) I was told that a person had been somewhat annoying to some of the people outside. I chased her down and found she was with some organization that was supposed to go to polling places to find if any rules were being violated. She said she was about to write us up for not having a curbside parking area. Somehow she missed our 100-foot- long curbside parking area, with its eight orange cones, curbside stand, masking tape arrows, and many signs. Go figure. I was not impressed. 3) We had one campaigner ask to use the restroom inside the voting enclosure. I told her that was not allowed and why. She was understandably distressed and said she would contact her campaign manager. I hope she did. Maybe that would bring to light whether the campaign was warned by the BOE about the lack of restrooms for campaigners at this polling place, or whether the campaign had warned its workers. Note that there is no longer even the Rolesville Park porta-potty, which used to be at the nearby park entrance several years ago. > OBSERVERS < ========= 1) We had two Precinct-Specific Observers, one Republican and one Democratic. We had a chair for each located near the RT, BT, and HT. We had no problems with either one. They observed that there were no attempts to intimidate or influence voters and no other ways in which Officials were not following procedures. They were mainly interested in collecting voter names from ringed bundles of ATVs, which we provided. They noted it was hard to hear names voiced at the RT because often many people were speaking at once. However the ATVs provided what they needed, so the hearing problem wasn't really significant. 2) Whoever managed the Republican Observers gave misinformation to their Observer and Runner. They were told that at various times we would provide a list of people who had voted. Of course the Wake County voting system does not provide this capability; I assume some other counties have hardware that provides this. I explained this over and over to the Observer and Runner. They called someone and spent a long time at various times in various calls trying to get better directions. Meanwhile the Observer just started to handwrite the hundreds of names and addresses from the ATVs, having been given no better direction. Finally they got back to her and said that was not necessary. She stayed a while longer until her shift ended, then left. Meanwhile the Democratic Observer had a cell phone app that let her scan the voter's barcode on an ATV. She was able to get pretty quickly all she needed and left early. 3) We had one person who said he was a Democratic At-Large Observer. I met him outside. He just wanted to know if a Democratic Observer had shown up yet. She hadn't at that time. He left right away. Because he hadn't come inside, I didn't have the Observer list to verify if he was on it. > VOTER COMPLAINTS/DIFFICULTIES/BEHAVIOR < ===== ================================ 1) The voters seemed very happy. Most of the day there were no lines at all. The weather was beautiful. Everything was working properly. 2) Most voters brought their own masks. We offered masks to those who didn't. Some accepted; some didn't 3) I did encounter one angry woman who wanted to vote curbside. She couldn't get in the parking place because another curbside voter had not obeyed the signs, had parked incorrectly, and was blocking the way. I got the errant driver to move his car to the right orientation. Then both voters were able to get their cars in the parking area and both were served by Curbside Officials. 4) In contrast to the March election, I did not hear of any voter confusion about jurisdictions, e.g., the new Congressional District. > HARDWARE AND SUPPLIES < ======== === ======== 1) Our curbside doorbell did not work. It rang a few times and then stopped. Pushing the button produced no ring. After some debugging with the Voter Assistants Quick Guide and then the Help Line, it was decided the battery in the sending unit was bad. The button did not light up. However we could see no way to open the unit, as the Help Line asked us to do. (That's not what the Quick Guide says to do.) We wouldn't have had a proper replacement battery even if we could have opened the unit. We checked with our Coordinator; she did not have a replacement. So we asked that they send us a new sender/receiver doorbell. They did that Tuesday morning. The new system worked properly. We red-tagged the bad doorbell. 2) We got two laptops. For one they included the wrong type of power adapter. It had a three-prong vs. two-prong plug at one end, so wouldn't work with the included extension cord. It had a mystery plug at the other end that would not fit into any of the laptop ports. We reported all this and they sent a proper replacement Tuesday morning. 3) We got many disinfectant spray bottles, but only one sprayer. They sent more on Tuesday morning. 4) We needed six table shields and got only five. So our BT Official ended up using only a face shield. The Ballot Table has the least voter/Official talking back and forth, so had the least possibility of spreading the virus. 5) One voting booth had a ragged edge. Our Official taped over the problem area and we red-tagged the booth. 6) Of course we had a lot of left-over PPE. It was a great idea to donate that to the school. It is unclear what they will do with 1000+ "I VOTED IN THE 2020 ELECTION!" pens, but everything else looked like it would be pretty useful to them. 7) The Safety webinar had warned that the face shields had a film cover that clouded the view and must be removed. However for a long time we found it impossible to remove the film. We finally thought maybe we had gotten shields from a different manufacturer and they had no film. However one of our more persistent Officials finally got the film off a shield. After seeing that, I found I could easily get off the film if I used a pocketknife to puncture the film at one corner and then slide the blade under the film. I could never get the film off with just my fingers. They really should provide a tab for such films as they do for film covers to new devices such as TV screens and laptop screens. 8) I wore gloves all day. I got several BOE text messages on my personal cell phone asking me to reply with my precinct number and current Tabulator count. It was VERY difficult to enter text on my small iPhone while wearing gloves. That wasted time. I asked that they call the Help Table and get this info verbally, as they had in previous elections. I assume this "use text" change was made to be more efficient for the BOE. 9) The initial (Saturday pickup) ballot box seals still pop off easily, e.g., when the boxes are being removed to or from a car trunk. Not very secure. Both the "Not Voted" and "Voted" stickers did work well this time as in previous elections. 10) We could use some masking tape rolls for the uses described above. Probably other polling places could also for similar reasons. In the meantime I'll keep buying the tape for 19-19. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/BOE_Supplies.txt for some other supplies comments from past elections that still apply. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/BOE_Wish_List.txt for my current general wish list. > PICKUP/DELIVERY < =============== 1) Saturday pickup went pretty well. However there were many workers and they sometimes gave conflicting instructions for driving. I was one of the first people for pickup; I assume they got much better after they had processed a few more people. 2) Last election they used a checkered flag to mark the entrance. That was much better than the "CLOSED" flags used this time. I assume the "CLOSED" flags were all they had now. Also they placed two flags, one by each driveway/entrance. The first entrance going south was the one that should NOT be used, so having the flag by it was confusing, even though it literally said "CLOSED". But we had been told to watch for a "CLOSED" flag as the marker at the entrance to be used. The second "CLOSED" flag was at the entrance to be used. 3) As usual I was not able to make the Tuesday night delivery deadline to deliver to Knightdale, but instead had to go to WCBOE's Operations Center on New Hope Rd. The distance and drive time is about the same, so going to New Hope is fine with me. We did a near-perfect poll closing, yet I was not able to start driving until 9:25 PM; there was no way could I get to Knightdale by 9:30. 4) Why must we cart the unused ATVs to the dropoff sites? They contain no secure data. Why can't those boxes be left at the polling place for the movers? My car is very full. > PICTURES < ======== For some pictures and explanatory text about the voting enclosure, voting equipment, etc., see https://photos.app.goo.gl/Lg3Sxc1jevwn4Shw8 If you are unfamiliar with viewing Google Photo albums, http://jgkhome.name/Misc/Google_Photos.htm gives some hints. In particular, note how to view the full text beside each picture. > SOME THOUGHTS ON EARLY VOTING < ==== ======== == ===== ====== 1) Given the small number of voting booths at the Wake Northern Regional Center this year (social distancing restrictions), it is too bad that New Bethel Baptist Church (19-09) was not available as a second north Wake County early voting site as it had been in 2016. There were very long lines at Northern Regional every day. 2) Some people started to realize that Wake Tech Community College (North Campus) was a better choice, even if eight or so miles further away. However it seems this WTCC choice wasn't well known to many voters, despite the BOE's excellent new "Estimated Wait Time" web page. This better choice was often made known by "word of mouth" (social media nowadays). However many people did not get the news or ignored it; the Northern Regional lines were often hours long. 3) Also, the map on the Wake County WCBOE Early Voting web page was not too good in showing people how to get to Building K at WTCC. Building K is in a remote part of the campus and the WCBOE's map marker was on the wrong side of the campus. There was an image at the bottom of the page which was helpful in showing the Building K local area layout, but gave no context about the area's location on the campus. People had begun to make posts on the Nextdoor community website, recommending that voters use the WTCC site instead of Northern Regional. I updated one of my web pages to give driving instructions and provided a link to a good "how to get there" Google map. I then made a Nextdoor post with information on all this. Report written by Jeff Knauth, Chief Judge for 19-19 with input from the other officials for this precinct