Boston online poll-worker training thread

I attended online City of Boston poll-worker training this morning and live-posted it on Mastodon. Here’s the thread for anyone who’s curious:

Well, this could be incredibly boring or perhaps interesting to a few people. I’m about to do my online Boston poll-worker training for the November election, and I’m going to live-post throughout the training. Follow along if you’re curious.
#pollWorker #pollWorkerTraining #voting #elections #politics #USPol #MAPoli

We are now going through the start-of-meeting exercise of a bunch of people who don’t understand technology trying to figure out how to operate Google Meet.
This includes one of the hosts asking all the people calling in what their names are (since all he can see is a phone number) so they can get credit for attending the training.
#pollWorkerTraining

Needless to say we also have a bunch of people who haven’t muted themselves despite being asked to multiple times having private conversations on mic.
#pollWorkerTraining

I am trying to figure out how it can be, after all these years of #Zoom eating their lunch, that #GoogleMeet still doesn’t have a way (or at least not any that I can find) to page through the tiles for everyone attending a meeting.
#pollWorkerTraining

If you are getting the impression, from my earlier posts in this thread, that generally speaking poll-workers are not a population that is exceedingly familiar and comfortable with technology, that impression would be correct.
OK, here we go, 15 minutes past the scheduled start time and we’re finally starting the training.
#pollWorkerTraining

This is a mixed class: inspectors, clerks, and wardens all in the same training. That means they’re going to cover some stuff that’s only relevant to the clerks and wardens.
#pollWorkerTraining

Bad things that happened in the last election:
* Police being sent back to City Hall without the tabulator.
* Voters being given the wrong paperwork or being given paperwork they shouldn’t have been given at all, because the poll-workers didn’t call City Hall to find out what to do.
* More of these should-not-have-happeneds will come up throughout the training.
(The trainer sounds a bit salty today.)
#pollWorkerTraining

Pep talk slide: Thank you for your service, here’s why what you’re doing is important, “Democracy is only as strong as its poll workers!”
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Next slide: we just took the poll-worker’s oath specified in Massachusetts law (MGL. Ch. 54 Sec. 20).
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MA voter registration deadline: October 26
There will be in-person early voting, poll-workers will soon be invited to sign up to work it.
MA vote by mail applications must be received by October 29.
Don’t forget to turn on the tabulator before the polls open.
Don’t forget to plug in and power on the cell phone the elections department will use to communicate with you. Answer the phone if it rings!
Remember to log how many people are in line in the clerk’s book every hours.
#pollWorkerTraining

Arrive at your polling location by 6am.
Be professional, respectful and polite.
Don’t use your cell phone except for emergencies and breaks.
No wearing any political stuff.
Be tolerant of diversity.
#pollWorkerTraining

Roles: each precinct has a warden (chief election officer), clerk (record keeper), and four or more inspectors (worker bees).
Some precincts also have interpreters in person. Those that don’t can use the elections department interpreter line if a voter needs an interpreter.
Each precinct also has a police officer. They maintain order, courier the ballot box and tabulator to City Hall, staff the check-out table.
#pollWorkerTraining

The police officer also couriers the box containing the blank ballots and other sensitive items from the local police station to the precinct at the start of the day.
#pollWorkerTraining

If you don’t fill out the payroll page you don’t get paid for working the polls.
(Yes, poll-workers in Massachusetts are paid. I think poll-workers get paid in most states. It’s minimum wage or a bit higher for the clerks and wardens.)
#pollWorkerTraining

Poll-workers are responsible for ensuring accessibility. That means accessible entrances, all paths at least 36 inches wide, one set of signs low enough that it can be read easily by people in wheelchairs.
If the accessible entrance needs to be locked for security reasons then it needs to be staffed by a poll-worker.
#pollWorkerTraining

The “standard” ballot is English and Spanish. Some precincts also receive Chinese and/or Vietnamese ballots.
I believe our precinct gets a few Chinese ballots but no Vietnamese. They end up not being used for most elections, but I suspect some of them will be used in the November election, given how many people are expected to show up.
#pollWorkerTraining

Polls open at 7am. If your polling location is unlocked too late (e.g., the custodian shows up late) to do all the prep before 7am (doesn’t happen often), your highest priority should be making sure you are ready to accept ballots at 7am. If the tabulator isn’t ready to scan ballots by 7am, they go in the hand-count slot and then removed from there and fed into the machine when it is ready.
#pollWorkerTraining

The ballot in Boston for this election is two sheets of paper because of all the ballot questions (depending on precinct, there are 5 or 6 questions). We need to remember to give every voter both sheets.
The voter can feed the sheets into the tabulator in any order and direction; it’s smart enough to figure it out.
#pollWorkerTraining

If someone shows up who thinks they should be listed as a registered voter but they aren’t in the book, we _must_ call the elections department and ask what to do. We should be prepared to provide the name and date of birth of the voter when we call. They will tell us what to do.
#pollWorkerTraining

If a voter is marked inactive in the poll-book, they have to show ID to vote. If they can’t show ID, the clerk or warden is required to “challenge” the voter’s ballot, but they’re still allowed to vote.
Challenged votes _are_ counted by the tabulator, but they have “challenged” written on them with additional information so they can be uncounted later if that’s found to be necessary.
Yes, that means challenged votes are not entirely secret!
#pollWorkerTraining

Other reasons why someone’s ballot could be challenged:
* Person challenging them claims they already voted.
* Person challenging them claims they don’t live where they’re registered.
* Person challenging them claims they aren’t who they say they are.
#pollWorkerTraining

Provisional ballots are issued if:
* Voter claims the right to vote but they’re not on the voter list.
* Voter is listed on the voting list as being required to show ID (first time voter) and they don’t have ID.
* Voter list says they already voted.
Provisional ballots are _not_ counted, they are kept separate and counted later by the elections department if they decide it’s appropriate to do so.
Provisional ballots also aren’t secret, for this reason.
#pollWorkerTraining

An aside, not actually part of the training…
Provisional ballots are a pain in the ass to do. If you forgot to register to vote or your ballot is legitimately not going to be counted, then please, I’m begging you, don’t waste the poll-workers’ time by demanding to cast a provisional ballot.
#pollWorkerTraining

“We ask that you process absentee ballots when there is a lull.”
Ha! There aren’t going to be lulls in November, it’s a f’ing presidential election.
Let’s hope they count as many as possible of the absentee and mail-in ballots downtown before election day so we don’t have to process them all.
#pollWorkerTraining

If the tabulator says that a ballot is blank or over-voted, we have to give the voter the opportunity to fix the ballot, but if they don’t want to, they can feed it back into the tabulator as-is.
(Sometimes the tabulator says a ballot is blank because the voter didn’t fill in the circles properly, and sometimes it’s because they didn’t want to vote on any of the races on the ballot.)
#pollWorkerTraining

Because this election has two sheets for each ballot, if a voter spoils one sheet of their ballot and needs to redo it, but the other sheet is fine, we need to “spoil” a blank sheet of the other variety from our pile to put into the spoiled ballot envelope with the sheet that the voter spoiled, so that our ballot counts remain correct (we don’t want there to be more blanks of one sheet than the other left at the end of the day).
#pollWorkerTraining

In the September election some of the tabulators ran out of paper while printing the tapes, which caused “mass hysteria” (trainer’s words, not mine) at city hall. We’ve therefore added slides to the training to show how to replace the tape roll. Presumably that means there will be replacement tape rolls included among the election supplies sent to each precinct?
I hope they don’t mean they’ll courier tape rolls to the precincts only after they run out!
#pollWorkerTraining

People with disabilities have the right to vote in Massachusetts.
They are allowed to ask poll-workers for assistance or have someone of their choosing accompany them to assist.
There is an “AutoMARK” machine which assists visually impaired people via magnification and hearing impaired people by reading the ballot out loud.
When should speak directly to the voter, not the person assisting them.
#pollWorkerTraining

Anyone is allowed to observe the voting.
They can bring their own list of voters to mark, listen to voter names being called out by poll-workers, and challenge voters for legitimate reasons.
Observers can’t ask for additional information about voters; block the voting path; discuss voting results wiht poll-workers; interact with voters while they are voting; or bring or wear political stuff in the voting area.
#pollWorkerTraining

No campaigning or collecting signatures with 150 feet of the polling location entrance.
No candidates inside the polling location glad-handing people.
The police officer enforces these rules under the direction of the warden.
(Not part of the training: generally the 150-foot rule is loosely enforced, but sometimes campaign volunteers do cross a line and we have to send the police officer outside to tell them to behave.)
#pollWorkerTraining

Polls close at 8pm. If there are people in line at 8pm they need to be allowed to vote. The police officer should station themselves at the end of the line at 8pm and not allow anyone else to get in line.
We should keep our tabulators turned on until at least 8:10pm in case the election department shows up last-minute with a final batch of absentee / mail-in ballots.
#pollWorkerTraining

Note: except for a lunch-break, poll-workers are at the polls from 6am until 9pm. Please be nice to them, they’re tired and harried.
#pollWorkerTraining

The trainer is now going over all the administrivia that the clerk needs to do in the clerk’s book after the polls close. This includes counting write-in and hand-count ballots, transferring totals from the tabulator tape to the tally sheet in the book, transferring the write-in and hand-count counts to the tally sheet, adding all that stuff together, recording the final used and blank ballot counts and making sure they’re consistent, and some other stuff.
#pollWorkerTraining

Aside, not part of the training: the totals in the clerk’s book are not final. There may be additional mail-in ballots postmarked by election day but received after election day or deposited into a dropbox too late on election day to get to the polls. They may also be provisional ballots that end up being counted. This is why “certified” results don’t get released until several days after the election.
#pollWorkerTraining

Sometimes the inspectors are allowed to leave early, before the warden and clerk leave, but because this is going to be a very busy and potentially harrying election, they’re asking everybody to stay until the end.
#pollWorkerTraining

They’re talking about the importance of deescalation if someone gets worked up during the election (this has not been mentioned on any of the previous poll-worker trainings I’ve done). They’re giving a _little_ bit of advice about deescalation, but honestly, IMHO it’s not enough. Good deescalation training takes hours, including a substantial amount of role-playing for practice.
Hopefully this won’t be necessary. 😕
#pollWorkerTraining

Worst case, if someone seems like they are going to get violent, enlist the assistance of the police officer, but obviously this is to be avoided if at all possible.
#pollWorkerTraining

Another story about the September election: there were a substantial number of people who agreed to work the election and then didn’t show up. It was a big problem, and those people were not invited to work the November election. We still need more election workers for November, so please ask your friends to sign up.
https://www.boston.gov/departments/election/how-apply-become-poll-worker
#pollWorkerTraining

They just gave us a “code word” we can give to the elections department to prove we were at the training if something is messed up and we don’t get credit for it.
I’m not going to tell you what the code word is. 😉
#pollWorkerTraining

Time for Q&A:
Q: How can I get a copy of the slides?
A: I’ll be sending it out shortly after the training.
Q: How many columns will there be on the ballot tally sheet?
A: There should only be one. (Because it’s not a primary so there aren’t separate ballots per party.)
One of the poll-workers just asked for the third time to make sure she was counted as having attended. *sigh*
And someone else just used the Q&A to make sure they’d been counted as attending the training.
#pollWorkerTraining

Q: Do we have to avoid wearing certain colors, e.g. blue or red, that have political significance?
A: No.
(Side note: for historical reasons, in MA primary elections the Democratic ballots are red and the Republican ballots are blue.)
Q: The accessibility ramp was taken down at our polling place in September. There was another ramp but there was no signage for it. Can we make sure this is addressed in November:
A: Trainer said she would make sure it’s taken care of.
#pollWorkerTraining

Q: Will mail-in ballots also be two sheets per person?
A: Yes.
Q: Are we allowed to suggest resources to voters to learn about the candidates and ballot questions?
A: No, they need to find that information themselves, we need to stay neutral. There will be posted information about the ballot questions.
Q: Can someone vote if the book says they were issued an early-voter ballot but they didn’t send it back?
A: Yes, if they aren’t marked with an X, they can vote in person.
#pollWorkerTraining

Q: (More of a question than a comment.) Inspectors keep leaving early, you said they’re not supposed to do that.
A: Yes, that’s why I said earlier in the training that people shouldn’t do that.
Q: What about people with modified schedules?
A: If we’ve given you a modified schedule, you can leave when your shift is over. The roster in the clerk’s book will indicate when you’re supposed to leave.
#pollWorkerTraining

Here endeth the training. I’m happy to answer other questions about poll-working if you’ve got any.
#pollWorkerTraining