Who has what experience?

[eridani]

IMO, if you have not actually worked as a poll worker or elections observer in a large county, you are not qualified to say anything about the best way to have fair and transparent elections in such a county.

Bear in mind that managing and coordinating large numbers of people is every bit as much of a problem for clean elections as getting complex pieces of equipment to work properly.

[evlbstrd]

1. Q: How many Viet Nam vets does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: You weren't there, man!

[Monkeyman]

2. one

[evlbstrd]

3. Good answer.

Bad push poll.

[eridani]

4. The point of the poll is that we have PEOPLE issues as well as--

--technology issues. The checks and balances that are necessary in order to have fair and transparent elections depend on administratively organizing large numbers of people as well as monitoring and auditing specific technologies. If you are not one of the people pitching in to help run elections, why aren't you? Running elections is an extremely challenging thing to do in a large county, and elections administrators are for that reason very vulnerable to the siren songs of private companies who are constantly crooning "O let us relieve you of your heavy, heavy burdens." If we are going to successfully hold their feet to the fire on the necessity of transparency and audits, we can't possibly succeed unless we are willing to recognize the importance of administrative issues.

[evlbstrd]

5. My point is that your framing demonizes those of us

who haven't worked in elections in some kind of official capacity. There are only so many of those positions available. But, there are other options. We have a group locally that unsuccessfully fought the introduction of Diebold machines. And I will be a poll watcher for the Democratic Party in my state's primary next week. We do what we can.

[kster]

6. Thank you, Keep doing what you do....nt

[evlbstrd]

7. Thanks, but I'm not bragging.

Just trying to make a point. I was push-polled last weekend, and I didn't like it one little bit. The original post struck me in the same way.

[salvorhardin]

8. Right

I've helped run Get Out The Vote campaigns for the local Democratic Party in the past, but I've never been a poll worker. In my small county the League of Women Voters usually has those slots filled months in advance (that kind of thing still has a high social status where I live, which is good). While poll workers are important, there are plenty of ways people can help out on election day. I think the key here is to get more people personally involved in running their communities. Civic pride?

[Awsi Dooger]

10. Same here

I've worked GOTV on election day the last two cycles, once for a House candidate and once for the party. As soon as I volunteered in 2002 they basically told me the poll worker slots were filled early by those with past experience, so my role would be transportation.

[eridani]

12. Exactly

We are going to have to boost the hands on participation of far more people if we are to ever really achieve the checks and balances that truly transparent elections require. And develop effective protocols for people management--this is every bit as important as auditing methods.

[eridani]

11. Not trying to demonize non-participants

Only trying to get a handle on how working in the belly of the beast changes your perception. Also to get people to realize that our problems are administrative as well as tabulation method related.

[Awsi Dooger]

9. One million is a huge number to start with

I study county vote trends and a tiny percentage have one million votes. This says voters, not votes, but even factoring up by that criteria I doubt there are more than 20 or 25 counties with 1 million+ registered voters. That's in the US, obviously.

[eridani]

13. I know

I live in one of them. I'm trying to point out that different numbers of ballots and their complexity will have to be strong determinants of our strategies.

[OnTheOtherHand]

14. here's what Bill Bored would apparently ask:

how important is the total number of ballot styles in assessing the feasibility of hand counts, if there is only one ballot style per precinct? Maybe you can tackle that elsewhere, since it doesn't really fit in the poll thread.

(I live in New York; we vote on lever machines, ka-chunk.)