* *** POSTMORTEM_2021-11-02 TXT - 9 Nov 2021 00:44:42 - JGKNAUTH Postmortem Report for Precinct 19-19 for 11/2/2021 Election ---------- ------ --- -------- ----- --- --------- --------- > SUMMARY < ======= The voter turnout at Precinct 19-19 was a good deal higher than normal for a municipal election. The flow thru most of the day was moderate and steady, a good situation for our processing. There was not the typical early morning rush of voters to cause a big line, nor were there extended times during the day when no voters were in line, as often happens in a municipal election. Maybe the weather influenced the turnout timing. It was cold in the morning, but then was sunny and comfortably warm most of the day before it clouded up in the afternoon. We had no significant problems, although there were some unusual things (described below) which were resolved. Having this a teacher workday was a big help -- no carpool lines to deal with. Hopefully this can be done for all elections. COVID-19 considerations were minimal for this election compared to a year ago; there were no problems in that area. We all wore masks (and gloves where appropriate). Many of the voters wore masks. If there were any voter requests for the masks or one-use pens we were prepared to distribute, I did not see them. This was the seventh election at the Sanford Creek Elementary School (SCES) polling place. By now we have pretty well figured out how to configure and handle this site. > STATISTICS < ========== The calculations below use the number of voters registered as of 11/1/21 who were eligible for a municipal election. The turnout for this election was about 17.4% at the polling place and 1.2% via absentee voting (mail-in or one-stop) for a total of about 18.6% of registered voters eligible for a municipal election. Tabulator vs. ATV counts: 1198 vs. 1198 Provisional ballots: 1 Spoiled ballots: 10 Emergency bin ballots: 0 Challenged ballots: 0 Curbside voters: 26 AutoMARK voters: 0 Observers: 2 (2 Precinct-Specific Observers) (0 At-Large Observers) Registered voters: 7517 (of which 6893 were eligible for the municipal election) (as of 11/01/21) Monday-list absentees: 78 (the long list in Pollbook box #1) Last-minute absentees: 3 (the short list gotten from the PO website) ---- Total absentees: 81 Voting booths: 19 (including 2 provisional and 1 accessible) Total chairs at tables: 0 (at 0 square 42" tables) -- Total "booths" 19 Ballot Count Reconciliation web page: http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Ballot_Count_Reconciliation_2021-11-02.htm > STAFFING AND EMAIL CONSIDERATIONS < ======== === ===== ============== We ended up with twelve Officials. This was after a couple of dropouts, then replacements for them, then a dropout of a replacement, and finally an on-call added on Election Day. All were definitely needed because of the higher than expected turnout. There was a good mix of very experienced Officials and three who had never worked an election before. Several others had worked only one to three elections. Four of the twelve were out-of-precinct. We tried to move people around a good deal to give them experience in many areas. All worked exceptionally well and we hope to have them back again in 2022. I had some problems contacting the Precinct Officials listed in the initial roster. This apparently was because the Officials were not frequently checking for mail at the address registered with the BOE. Followup phone calls a few days later reached those Officials. In contrast, last year the emails to many Officials went into their spam folders, which the Officials did not check. Later there was a different problem with one of my replacement Officials. She was never able to receive and/or download my emails sent to her Earthlink address. I later communicated with her at her work address. This same Earthlink problem with her had happened last year. I was never able to debug it. She could receive BOE emails with no problem. Earlier in the year I had sent the BOE some suggestions to reduce email problems. See See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Email_Problems_and_Solutions.txt > CJ PORTAL AIRTABLE REPORTS < == ====== ======== ======= The CJ portal is very helpful. I was able to quickly learn of roster changes and get associated contact information. That let me try to contact a replacement immediately, required because of the contact problems often encountered (see above) so reaching the new Official might take a while. In the past I would usually learn of a dropout by an email from the departing Official, but then would have to wait for a day or days before I would get the new roster pdf from the BOE with contact information for the replacement Official. However it is not as easy as it should be to print a new roster. As I have previously reported with details to the BOE Staff, e.g., in last year's postmortem, Airtable printing is pretty bad. I have to resort to Windows Snip & Sketch to print something similar to the pdf CJ report. Another example is the Wake County BOE website > Voter Info > Lists of Elected Officials > Wake County Directory of Public Officials, which used to be a pdf file that printed easily. Not now. > POLLING PLACE SETUP < ======= ===== ===== 1) We used the same basic 3-RT-Officials configuration we used last November, although I shifted things a little to provide more room in several areas. Because the voter flow was moderate but steady in this election (no big surges), we didn't need voters to use the Disney line. However this election let us practice setting up things as will be needed in 2022 so we won't have to learn on the fly in March. The main change in 2022 will be to add a back row of tables to act as additional voting booths, as we have done in past elections. http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Sanford_Creek_Elementary_Layout_3RT_measure.pdf http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Sanford_Creek_Elementary_Layout_3RT.pdf 2) Last year one of our Officials noted that it was very dark at the place voters need to turn to get to get to our hidden Voting Enclosure door. There are no nearby parking lot lights. Our "Vote Here" arrow sign at that important location was not too visible and in a big election all our other direction signs earlier in the path get lost among the many campaign signs. This year I brought some inexpensive LED lights to hang on the "Vote Here" sign. They seem to make the "Vote Here" (turn) sign visible from a long way down the path. Of course in this election our other signs did not have many campaign signs to compete with. That won't be the case in the 2022 elections. > POLLBOOKS < ========= 1) When I reviewed the binders the RT Officials had organized, I found they had marked the start/stop letter on the clear covers with dry mark pens. The markings had already started to smudge off when I got the books. Monday night I cleaned off the covers and then marked the white insert sheets with a Sharpie. Tuesday morning I told the RT Officials about the problem. The Manual and the video show the correct procedure for marking start/stop letters. I assume the printed instructions in the pollbook box do as well. The RT Officials just missed following that step. 2) Some binders had rings that would not close properly. One binder had just one bad ring; another had three bad rings. I red-tagged both binders. When the BT Table Officials initially organized the pollbooks, they had freed up two binders, so they later were able to replace the bad binders with good ones. The Officials complimented the BOE on the flexibility the binders offered, although they also mentioned how heavy they were. > REGISTRATION TABLE AND LINES < ============ ===== === ===== 1) We had an almost continuous flow of voters; the RT lines were seldom empty. However the lines were never long enough that we had to use our Disney line. Our Line Monitor Official greeted voters and directed them to the proper one of the three alphabetic lines we had set up for three RT stations. When one of the lines built up and its Official was busy currently handling a voter, available Officials would ask people in that line if their name letters would allow use of a pollbook not currently being used for that line. Then that person could skip ahead and be handled with the available pollbook by an available Official. In fact when there was a spare Official available from elsewhere in the room and the RT lines were large, often four RT Officials would handle the three lines, neatly passing around letter and pollbook responsibility as they asked voters who could match the available pollbooks. The RT Officials did all this very efficiently. It was not just the same set of people doing this; very many of the 19-19 Officials had a chance to work at the RT during the day. 2) 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. > BALLOT TABLE AND VOTING BOOTHS < ====== ===== === ====== ====== 1) Even though the RT was passing thru voters very quickly, there was never a big backup at the BT. We had a small BT waiting area to use, which worked well. The BT Officials were handling things very efficiently even though there were two ballot styles to deal with. 2) In all this speedy processing, even with the large number of ballots cast, I found almost no ATV marking or numbering errors. I was able to review all but the last two dozen ATVs. 3) Our Voting Booth Officials kept the booths clean, directed voters to available booths, and then to the Tabulator. They also helped the BT Officials keep the ATV and Tabulator counts in sync by frequently gathering data for the check. Several times a numbering problem was caught, including the AutoMARK situation described later, so the problem could be addressed quickly. > HELP TABLE < ==== ===== 1) We had two HT Officials and two laptops. Despite the large turnout, the Help Table stayed very quiet. There was only one provisional envelope -- a registration via the DMV that had not yet gotten thru the system. There were very few "V"s to be processed; maybe voters are becoming more conscientious about reporting moves before it is too late. I saw no "ID"s at all. There were several "unincorporated" voters for whom the situation had to be explained and some voter redirections to the proper polling places. 2) I got called over to the HT several times to find a voter's pollbook entry. It had been missed initially by the RT Officials, usually because the name was misunderstood -- a fallout of mask muffled speech, I suspect. Once the name was displayed on the laptop, finding the pollbook entry became easy. > CURBSIDE < ======== 1) We had a number of Officials who handled our record number of curbside voters, 26 voters in all. Some of these Officials had not done curbside before. Everyone did this complicated procedure very well. 2) As in past elections, we used masking tape arrows to direct the flow. That tape is very visible on the asphalt and holds up well all day, yet it comes off easily after poll closing. 3) However it was a tough election for some of our curbside equipment. I red-tagged the following two: a) Someone ran over an A-frame, badly bending one of the metal legs. Apparently they tried to take a shortcut to turn sharply into the curbside area instead of following our signs and arrows to go around the loop and come in easily the right way. I didn't learn about this when it happened, but heard it later from one of the Officials who said she had to pull the A-frame from the car's wheel well. I don't know what sort of damage the car sustained. b) Someone ran over a collapsible cone, breaking off some of the plastic. I don't know any details about that incident. 4) I have some signage ideas that might help in the curbside area. I have put notes on several of these in the curbside photos info sidebars. See the PICTURES section at the end of the postmortem to access that album. > TABULATOR < ========= 1) We had no major Tabulator problems this time. 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) We initially had a problem starting the Tabulator because the printout did not get far enough to show our precinct number. That was a user error; we had missed the step which caused more of the tape to print. 3) Our Tabulator Monitor helped each voter, showing them where to insert the ballot and telling them to wait for the screen to display the ballot's acceptance status. We had no runaway voters because they all waited as directed. 4) We had a few overvotes; all those voters decided to spoil the ballot and mark a new one. We had no cases in which a mismarked ballot was rejected by the Tabulator. At least this set of voters seemed know how to mark their ballots and use the Tabulator well. > AUTOMARK < ======== No one validly used the AutoMARK all day. However our worse problem of the day involved the AutoMARK. Around 3:00 PM the BT Officials found the ATV count was now one larger than the Tabulator count. They verified that the ATVs were numbered correctly, meaning there was a ballot floating around somewhere. They notified me. After some searching I found it in the AutoMARK, which displayed a big red message that the session had timed out with a ballot inside. It said to use the TEST procedure to retrieve the ballot, which I did. TEST also resets the AutoMARK back to normal, i.e., again prompting the next voter to enter a ballot. I saw the ejected ballot had been marked by a pen; the marks were NOT printed by the AutoMARK. I then called the Help Line and was told to use the Abandoned Ballot procedure. That requires the three judges to decide whether the abandoned ballot had been "disturbed", which we interpreted to mean decide if it might have been marked by someone other than the voter to whom it had been given at the Ballot Table. We decided that the proper owner of the ballot had by mistake just put it in the AutoMARK instead of the Tabulator and walked away. By unanimous agreement, we decided it was not "disturbed", so we then inserted it in the Tabulator, which read it without error. That got our ATV and Tabulator counts back in sync. It is a mystery how someone got to the well-hidden AutoMARK. (But voters do unexpected things -- see the curbside equipment damage elsewhere in this report.) We always put the AutoMARK behind a bookcase, far off the normal, "arrowed" path the voters take to reach the Tabulator. There it was turned so only the side and back were visible, although there is a big BOE sign on it saying it is used by disabled voters to mark ballots. When I am not doing other things, I sit in a chair that you would have to pass close by to reach the distant AutoMARK, but I am often not in that chair. No Official saw anyone go anywhere near the AutoMARK; no voter said they tried to use the AutoMARK, which of course does not act at all like the Tabulator. Nevertheless, some voter got to it. We know it had been empty before all this because of the successful powerons Monday night and Tuesday morning. They completed normally with a display requesting the voter to enter a ballot. I had rechecked the AutoMARK multiple times during the day before this incident. All was OK; the "enter a ballot" message was still displayed. After having this problem I arranged a bunch of chairs to fully block the path to the AutoMARK. To get to it you would have to jump over the chairs or move them. Presumably only a Precinct Official would move them while escorting a voter to the AutoMARK. I also moved the AutoMARK even further back into a corner and turned it further away so only the back was visible. Maybe we need a camouflage cover for it. Or an electric fence. Or a hungry junkyard dog. > SCANNER < ======= 1) There should be an easy way to demo/test the scanner, e.g., with matching and mismatching bar codes printed on the box or in some document. This would particularly help people who are new to the BT or haven't used the scanner in a long time. The BT Quick Guide says the scanner should be tested during Monday setup. 2) There is conflicting information about scanner charging. The Chief Judge Pocket Guide (page 9) and Ballot Table Quick Guide say plug it in Monday to charge overnight. But Training Resources > Barcode Scanner Box Label http://msweb03.co.wake.nc.us/bordelec/downloads/15precinctofficials/Resources/BCSlabel.jpg says the scanner is fully charged and says using the charger is optional. The latter may be true and probably the intent is just to say the scanner does not require a cord during Tuesday's work. However we always do what the Guides say and plug it in to charge overnight, even if it may really already be fully charged. > RECONCILIATION PROCESS < ============== ======= 1) For poll closing I assigned one person to coordinate the packing up. She also was the lead at the BT and had 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. 2) Once all the arithmetic was completed, everything balanced properly as shown in http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Ballot_Count_Reconciliation_2021-11-02.htm > CAMPAIGNERS/OTHERS < ================== 1) The morning was very cold. An elderly woman campaign worker came to the door, said her hands were freezing, and asked if she could stand inside for a while. She was not wearing or carrying any campaign material. I let her stand out of the way (where waiting spouses normally stand) under the supervision of an Official for a short time. I then went to my car, got my big winter gloves, and lent those to her so she could go back outside. She later returned the gloves when her husband came with a car so she could get inside it. I considered this to be a judgement call; allowing her inside at all probably should not have been done. 2) Four campaign workers requested use of the restroom, which would require passing thru a good part of the Voting Enclosure. I told them the BOE did not permit this. In preparation for such requests (which often happen at the SCES polling place), I had copied the relevant Manual page to show anyone who questioned this restriction. I had highlighted the boldface "Campaigners may NOT enter the enclosure to access a restroom." Three accepted this, but one continued to object even after I showed her the Manual page. I told her to call the BOE to verify my statement; she did not want to do that. Eventually she gave up and walked away. Maybe the BOE or I should create a big sign to put outside. I continue to ask the BOE Staff if the campaign heads warn their people about this SCES restriction. As noted in prior postmortems, for several years now there is no longer even a Rolesville Park "porta-potty" nearby, so campaigners better understand the situation. 3) One campaign worker (the same one who argued about the restroom restriction) then stated that a candidate could not wear campaign material when voting. She claimed that was what she had been taught in some (BOE?) class. In fact it is not what the BOE says, as I told her and subsequently verified via a call to the Help Line. The only restriction is that the candidate cannot actively campaign when coming in to vote, e.g., proclaiming, "Vote for me!". However wearing campaign material is allowed by anyone voting, including candidates. There is a restriction that Precinct Officials cannot wear such material. It was unclear why she raised all this in the first place; no candidate was voting. She did not seem convinced as she departed. > OBSERVERS < ========= We had two Observers, both Republican. They attended all afternoon and evening all the way to poll closing. They just observed -- no ATV recording. This was all new to them. I gave them some information to help them understand various parts of the process. I think they were there just to learn the ropes in preparation for the 2022 election. One comment they made was they saw some Officials using cell phones; I then went to remind those Officials this was not permitted in the Voting enclosure. The Observers seemed appreciative of the opportunity to see how things worked; fortunately everything worked very well in this busy election. > VOTER COMPLAINTS/DIFFICULTIES/BEHAVIOR < ===== ================================ There were no major voter problems. Once the current Tabulator Monitor said a woman had told him he was standing too close to the Tabulator. I repeated that he should stand not so far away that he couldn't easily see the screen, but not so close that voters might be concerned he could read the ballot. Of course, some people just want to try to raise an issue no matter what you do. In this election if a voter was really concerned, they could just have turned over their ballot so just the blank backside was visible; the Tabulator doesn't care. > HARDWARE AND SUPPLIES < ======== === ======== 1) We got sample ballots for Wendell instead of Wake Forest. The BOE called us to warn of the error and that a courier would bring Wake Forest samples, as he did. No one (Officials or voters) had mentioned the error before the phone call. I had not caught it. 2) See the red-tagged sign and cone problems mentioned under CURBSIDE and the binder ring problem under POLLBOOKS. 3) Is the BOE cell phone on the "Do Not Call" registry? It got some non-BOE calls Monday night. There was also got a sales text message on Tuesday. 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. > HELP LINE < ==== ==== We had to call the Help Line many times during the day. We always got thru immediately and then got good help. > WELEARN < ======= Prior to the election there were Help Table eligibility misclassifications for some of our Officials; that caused later WeLearn problems. Also one Official took a Basic class, but that taking was not registered, which caused later problems. All these were straightened out after the Officials got in touch with the BOE Staff. > DOCUMENTATION < ============= 1) See my comments on the November 2021 documents: http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Comments_on_2021.v.1_Documents.txt Many of those comments were also made on the November 2020 documents. I was told this September that some of the comments may not be addressed in the March 2022 documents either because those documents were already well under development. 2) The Observer Guide really needs to do a better job describing the "list" Observers can request. In the statute in the Guide, you can see someone in the Legislature tried to patch in an exclusion for some counties, saying excepted are those using '"an authorization to vote" document instead of poll books'. It's unclear what that means for a county like Wake that uses "ATVs" AND "pollbooks". I can see how the Republican Observer head last year could mistakenly or intentionally misread this. I realize this is language some legislator tried to put together to cover all counties. It's not (I hope) WCBOE or NCSBE text. I wish the Guide had some added WCBOE text specifically clarifying what is intended for Wake County, i.e., the CJ can give Observers controlled access to the ATV 100 packs, allowing the Observer to record voter names. This has been said elsewhere in the past, but it isn't in the current documentation, in particular it's not in the Observer Guide we are repeatedly told to use. 3) The "Precinct Supplies distributed at Supply Pickup" section of the Polling Place Report needs some work. Despite its title it has a mix of precinct specific items. It correctly lists the things I get, but not where they come from. Some actually are gotten at supply pickup, some are delivered in the gray bin, and some are stored in my garage between elections. The long line format is hard to read. Typo: "collapsable" -> "collapsible" 4) The supply lists should have a version number, as most other documents now do. > PICKUP/DROPOFF < =============== 1) Saturday pickup went pretty well. However there were many workers who sometimes gave conflicting instructions for driving/stopping and for ballot box contents verification. I was one of the first people for pickup; I assume they got much better after they had processed a few more people. 2) There was no "CLOSED" sign at the N. New Hope entrance vs what your documents say. That was a bad sign to use anyway. 3) Monday afternoon supply pickup in Knightdale was excellent. 4) I wish the BOE had packed the pollbooks in two boxes (they fit) instead of three -- two were pretty full and one was almost empty. My car is VERY full when packed to leave Tuesday night. It would not work to have three of the huge pollbook boxes; so we put everything in two and flattened the third. I had called the BOE to get permission to use only two boxes; they said I had to bring back all three, but could empty and flatten one to reduce the required volume. 5) Why can't the boxes of blank ATV forms be returned to the BOE by the movers instead of the CJs? Usually I have at least two ATV boxes to pack in my car with all the other Tuesday night items. Is there some security concern about those blank forms? That seems unlikely. 6) As usual, I could not meet the deadline to do the Tuesday dropoff in Knightdale, so had to drive to Raleigh. I think this will always be the case; the Raleigh drive is fine with me. Our poll closing and packup went very smoothly, but there is a LOT to do to restore this polling place and MUCH to pack. We finished at 9:05; I don't ever see that being bettered. It certainly precludes reaching Knightdale by 9:00. I don't mind driving to Raleigh; it is not much further and certainly is a safer drive. Why not just make this standard for 19-19 so I don't have to always call to say I can't get to Knightdale on time? Picking up in Knightdale on Monday works and should stay that way. Dropping off in Knightdale on a schedule I can never meet does not work. 7) The dropoff at the BOE Operations Center went pretty well. They did miss the two laptops initially -- unsurprising since my car was fully packed with BOE items and all my stuff. The laptops had gotten underneath some of my things. > PICTURES < ======== For some pictures and explanatory text about the 19-19 voting enclosure, voting equipment, etc., see https://photos.app.goo.gl/6Xu3EhkNA5wZsBjw6 If you are unfamiliar with viewing Google Photo albums, http://jgkhome.name/Misc/Google_Photos.htm gives some hints. In particular, note how to use the "circle i" to view the full text beside each picture. Report written by Jeff Knauth, Chief Judge for 19-19 with input from the other Officials for this precinct