Election Judge Report - final
Nov. 6th, 2020 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tskirvinIt absolutely knocked me out.
I've posted plenty about the election judging process: set up at 5am, open at 6am, close at 7pm, get out by 8pm-ish. That 15 hour day is bad enough when you *aren't* bone-tired from the preceding election season, but this time I was already weakened. I barely slept the night before, and my son woke up at 4am with me to whine about how I was keeping him up. And I knew perfectly well that the hours after the election were going to be a never-ending exercise in reloading election results.
I was assigned to a different polling place this time, and I wasn't in charge. The guy that was in charge was a Republican, but friendly and experienced and dedicated to the process, which is really all you can want; in total we had 8 judges, 2 R and 6 D. It was enough for the day. We were given plenty of PPE - plexiglass shields for the check-in judges to hide behind, gloves and masks for the public, a huge vat of hand sanitizer that came out way too quickly in hilarious ways. The polling place was nearby this time too, in the gym of my son's grade school - much closer and easier to deal with, though I'm pretty sure the floors did a number on me compared to the carpet of my old place.
The day itself actually went *really* well. We had beyond-record early voting in our county, ~52% between mail-ins and actual in-person early voting, so the turnout on election day was much smaller than it would have been - about 450 people. Only two people used the touchscreen system all day, which is great because they're still terrible. The longest line we ever had was ~30 at opening, and that went quickly and with minimal kvetching. The weather was great, too, so we were able to keep the doors open and have a good airflow.
The biggest change for me was the not-in-charge thing. In the past, I had the phone with a direct line back to the election division, and I was in charge of all organization decisions and the like; this time somebody else was doing it, and our philosophies didn't quite match. It wasn't a *huge* problem, but we made different compromises to keep things flowing. I was in charge of most of the setup/tear-down of the ballot boxes and the touchscreen, which job is supposed to be shared.
And between it all, I managed to knock myself out for days with my work. I wasn't sitting as much; and because I wasn't in charge officially, I spent more time out and about with the voters, making sure they were going to the right places and were taken care of, rather than on the phone with the election division or something. I was up and down *a lot*, and by 2pm I was hurting, with hours to go. I pushed through, and hurt myself in the process. Now, several days later, I'm still aching and exhausted.
I'm still worried about the Covid stuff, a few days later. We're having a massive spike in Covid cases here in my county *right now*, and even though mask use was very good and I was keeping myself as safe as possible, I was still exposed to many hundreds of people. I'm intending to get a Covid test shortly. But I'm still hopeful about it; mask use really was universal, and nobody argued with us about it except for one judge that really wanted her lunch out in the public area for some reason. *sigh*
Once it was all done, I limped home and just stared off into space. Like, for hours. I made it to actual sleep by about midnight, not looking at the results but hearing some stuff from my wife, and woke up again at 3am to continue staring. I *hurt*, physically and emotionally and spiritually, and couldn't do anything about it. What dreams I had were full of shame and doubt and convoluted ties between politics and my home life. It was awful. When I weighed myself in the morning, I had lost 5 pounds, presumably all water.
And of course I'm still worried about the results. Locally, things mostly went well; the Democrats won a majority of our County Board and several State and County-wide seats, we've kept at least 2/3 of our Congresscritters (and while #3 is heartbreaking - Lauren Underwood is amazing! - she's not out yet, there's still some more ballots to count and the margin is not necessarily insurmountable), and of course we voted for Biden over Trump at every level I was connected to. The attempt to institute a progressive income tax in Illinois went down based on a vigorous campaign of lies and misdirections from the state's billionaires, so we're going to see a general tax hike and reduction in services instead, which sucks but was obvious from a mile away. Basically, our local Township Democrats did a *great* job.
I've managed to avoid looking at the national results in detail every 5 minutes, somehow.
I haven't started on it yet, but I do intend to start bugging our newly-elected officials to change the laws so that we can do 8-hour election judge shifts instead of full-day. This current system has its benefits, but it's too exhausting, and we're not getting as many judges as we could because people can't work like this.
But, at any rate, I survived. I've started trying to return to the world a bit, and I'm moving and working. The fight continues, especially with the next municipal elections starting up Right Now (petitions are due in just a couple of weeks).
I've posted plenty about the election judging process: set up at 5am, open at 6am, close at 7pm, get out by 8pm-ish. That 15 hour day is bad enough when you *aren't* bone-tired from the preceding election season, but this time I was already weakened. I barely slept the night before, and my son woke up at 4am with me to whine about how I was keeping him up. And I knew perfectly well that the hours after the election were going to be a never-ending exercise in reloading election results.
I was assigned to a different polling place this time, and I wasn't in charge. The guy that was in charge was a Republican, but friendly and experienced and dedicated to the process, which is really all you can want; in total we had 8 judges, 2 R and 6 D. It was enough for the day. We were given plenty of PPE - plexiglass shields for the check-in judges to hide behind, gloves and masks for the public, a huge vat of hand sanitizer that came out way too quickly in hilarious ways. The polling place was nearby this time too, in the gym of my son's grade school - much closer and easier to deal with, though I'm pretty sure the floors did a number on me compared to the carpet of my old place.
The day itself actually went *really* well. We had beyond-record early voting in our county, ~52% between mail-ins and actual in-person early voting, so the turnout on election day was much smaller than it would have been - about 450 people. Only two people used the touchscreen system all day, which is great because they're still terrible. The longest line we ever had was ~30 at opening, and that went quickly and with minimal kvetching. The weather was great, too, so we were able to keep the doors open and have a good airflow.
The biggest change for me was the not-in-charge thing. In the past, I had the phone with a direct line back to the election division, and I was in charge of all organization decisions and the like; this time somebody else was doing it, and our philosophies didn't quite match. It wasn't a *huge* problem, but we made different compromises to keep things flowing. I was in charge of most of the setup/tear-down of the ballot boxes and the touchscreen, which job is supposed to be shared.
And between it all, I managed to knock myself out for days with my work. I wasn't sitting as much; and because I wasn't in charge officially, I spent more time out and about with the voters, making sure they were going to the right places and were taken care of, rather than on the phone with the election division or something. I was up and down *a lot*, and by 2pm I was hurting, with hours to go. I pushed through, and hurt myself in the process. Now, several days later, I'm still aching and exhausted.
I'm still worried about the Covid stuff, a few days later. We're having a massive spike in Covid cases here in my county *right now*, and even though mask use was very good and I was keeping myself as safe as possible, I was still exposed to many hundreds of people. I'm intending to get a Covid test shortly. But I'm still hopeful about it; mask use really was universal, and nobody argued with us about it except for one judge that really wanted her lunch out in the public area for some reason. *sigh*
Once it was all done, I limped home and just stared off into space. Like, for hours. I made it to actual sleep by about midnight, not looking at the results but hearing some stuff from my wife, and woke up again at 3am to continue staring. I *hurt*, physically and emotionally and spiritually, and couldn't do anything about it. What dreams I had were full of shame and doubt and convoluted ties between politics and my home life. It was awful. When I weighed myself in the morning, I had lost 5 pounds, presumably all water.
And of course I'm still worried about the results. Locally, things mostly went well; the Democrats won a majority of our County Board and several State and County-wide seats, we've kept at least 2/3 of our Congresscritters (and while #3 is heartbreaking - Lauren Underwood is amazing! - she's not out yet, there's still some more ballots to count and the margin is not necessarily insurmountable), and of course we voted for Biden over Trump at every level I was connected to. The attempt to institute a progressive income tax in Illinois went down based on a vigorous campaign of lies and misdirections from the state's billionaires, so we're going to see a general tax hike and reduction in services instead, which sucks but was obvious from a mile away. Basically, our local Township Democrats did a *great* job.
I've managed to avoid looking at the national results in detail every 5 minutes, somehow.
I haven't started on it yet, but I do intend to start bugging our newly-elected officials to change the laws so that we can do 8-hour election judge shifts instead of full-day. This current system has its benefits, but it's too exhausting, and we're not getting as many judges as we could because people can't work like this.
But, at any rate, I survived. I've started trying to return to the world a bit, and I'm moving and working. The fight continues, especially with the next municipal elections starting up Right Now (petitions are due in just a couple of weeks).
