competency rears its ugly head....

[jennlk]

foo. :(

There is a distinct probability that I will be co-chair of the live floor on Tuesday's election, rather than a minion in the AVCB. The person (N) who is scheduled as co-chair (with DC) has a mother-in-law in hospice as of Thursday AM. I do not approve of either of these statements. (N's MIL is a very nice lady.)

(not that I mind being competent, I just don't wanna be in charge.)

And BossClerk is starting to hunt for a replacement for DC, who has announced that she will be resigning as DC after the November election. I cannot be DC, as I do not live in that township (this is a feature, not a bug). She asked me, and I told her that I have no idea -- I haven't worked a live floor election since 2017 and I don't know the newer election workers.

Comments

[minnehaha]

Tell how you do elections! Live floor?

K.

[jennlk]

So Michigan has two ways of processing votes on Election Day.

There's the live floor, which is voters coming in the door of a polling place, receiving a ballot, marking it, and putting it into a tabulator.

There's the AVCB (Absent Voter Counting Board), which is a crew of people (usually four, in smaller jurisdictions like ours -- large cities can have hundreds of people) who process the ballots that have been mailed to/dropped off at the Clerk's Office or an Election Drop Box. The Counting Board checks to make sure the ballot in the ballot return envelope is the ballot that the voter was sent and then runs the ballot through a tabulator.

People working the live floor election are scheduled to arrive at 6am, and will be there until all the ballots are sealed up in appropriate tamper-evident containers. It can get stressful when voters get demanding (usually, they want a change in the voting laws, but the voting floor on election day is not the place for that), and it's always a long day, even if the voters are nice. The AVCB is usually very calm and not a full day -- for this election, with less than 500 ballots to be processed, the team is reporting at 2pm.

(If I wind up working live floor, my day is extended even more, as I will be going into the County Canvassers with BossClerk to drop off the USB sticks from the tabulators (with the vote counts) and the poll books (with the list of people who came in to vote).)