Ballot Fatigue
While working as a voting machine technician during the 2012 election, I kept a diary of my observations.
The bipartisan January 6th handwringing has prompted arch neocons like Liz Cheney to cross the aisle and endorse Kamala Harris. These DC insiders have joined the DNC regime in decrying MAGA claims of voting machine fraud as baseless conspiracy theories. But voting machines are built to fail. Like so much of our nation’s public infrastructure, election technologies are public-private enterprises deregulated through the revolving door of politicians and contractors, disenfranchising voters while earning billions for private corporations.
In 2002, following the 2000 election controversies, George W Bush signed the Help America Vote Act into law, which allocated funds to states to replace the old lever machines with new electronic machines. In 2010, to comply with the Act, New York City contracted with Election Systems & Software (ES&S) for $50 million. ES&S is an Omaha-based voting systems and software subsidiary of McCarthy Group, a private equity firm. ES&S was not the lowest bidder, but their New York lobbyist Anthony Mangone bribed a councilman to win his vote for the contract. Currently, about 50% of the US votes on ES&S machines and 30% of voters use ES&S’ rival, Dominion. New York City uses the machines to count paper ballots, but more and more counties are headed towards paperless elections.
During Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election, then secretary of state Brian Kemp beat state representative Stacey Abrams by only 55,00 votes, a little over 1% of the total vote. Soon after his inauguration, Kemp appointed Chuck Harper, the former ES&S lobbyist, his deputy chief-of-staff and decided the state needed to upgrade its ES&S voting machines to the newer paperless ES&S ballot-marking-devices, which would cost $150 million. This was after Kemp as Secretary of State had awarded ES&S with a $450,000 contract to do voter registration and ballot counting.
On October 11, 2020, in a suit brought by the Coalition for Good Governance, Georgia District Judge Amy Totenberg ruled that, despite widespread issues with touch-screen paperless voting machines, there was not enough time before the election to switch to paper ballots. In her decision, Totenberg writes, “in the 1983 film Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors is doomed to repeat the same day over and over again. ‘I wake up every day, right here, right in Punxsutawney, and it’s always February 2nd, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ The Court can relate; it feels like it’s February 2nd in Punxsutawney.”
For five years, including the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, I was subcontracted as a voting machine technician for ES&S in New York City. Hurricane Sandy had hit the New York area on October 29, 2012, a week before the presidential election, and the area suffered disastrous effects.. The storm caused $19 billion in damages and cut off power and gas to thousands of residents, jeopardizing their ability to vote in person, if at all. While working the 2012 election, I kept a diary of my observations. What follows is an edited version of my jottings.
Sunday, November 4th, 2012
The presidential election is in two days, on Tuesday. ES&S staff are at the warehouse when we arrive. They travel from company headquarters in Omaha to locations across the world to monitor each election that uses ES&S electronic voting machines. The company guys are not necessarily technicians; none of them know how to service the machines. That’s what my dozen or so subcontracted coworkers and I are here for. The ES&S guys are programmers, developers, sales people, and marketing reps. Every county in the country chooses its own election machinery. Some choose to administer their own elections, using paper ballots and hand-counting. Others, like each of the five counties that make up New York City, in addition to Long Island’s Nassau county, have chosen to privatize elections by purchasing machines from companies like ES&S. Outsourcing the machinery of elections also means outsourcing much of the supervision for elections. The New York Board of Elections still staffs hundreds of full-time public sector positions, all unionized and politically appointed. Each of the BOE workers has a “rabbi,” who appoints them, either as a Democrat or Republican, to a staff position. Across the boroughs, many BOE workers–lifelong Democrats–register as Republicans to get appointed.
After a coffee we walk back to the warehouse and wait around for a few hours, smoking and chatting with the BOE workers. They pass the time by ragging on each other, especially David. A guy named Tony says if there are 88 generators coming, we need 87 and the other one is David’s. We laugh and talk about carbon monoxide poisoning. My coworker reveals that he has extended release adderall that we can take tomorrow during our 20 hour day. The BOE workers drink Monster energy to stay awake. We talk about how people say there’s bull semen in Red Bull and deer blood in Jagermeister.
The truck finally arrives and we all grab jacks to unload the generators. Meanwhile the ES&S higher-ups, Randy and Klein, arrive. We check out the contents of the truck: 88 gas cans, 88 generators, and 88 power cords. We realize we don’t have the tools we need so it’s decided that I will go to Home Depot. I must be accompanied by a Democrat and Republican BOE worker. At the Nassau BOE, everything must be supervised by both a Democrat and Republican worker. This bipartisan coalition ensures that everyone plays by the rules. I run into some more ES&S supervisors who are standing around looking at their Blackberries. These men have gelled hair, down vests over polos, and relaxed fit pre-faded jeans with business casual slip-on shoes. I think about how much money is being spent on supervision. It feels like the election’s conscience has been outsourced to ES&S.
The ES&S supervisors want to do disaster tourism of the damage wreaked by Sandy. All of a sudden David is giving them directions to a neighborhood that got ravaged. The supervisors are thrilled. I think about the sex they have with their wives, the chafing sound made by their swishy down vests. David tells us that a tree fell on a gas line running into a man’s house. The man had lost power and when he lit a candle, his house exploded: “I mean it’s just rubble.”
I finally leave for Home Depot with a Democrat and a Republican. They ignore me and chat about the long lines at gas stations. The Republican says he bought a new car just for the full tank of gas that came with it. The Democrat talks about the traffic lights that are dark. The Republican says he told his mom, “no left turns, it’s too dangerous.” He told her to make three right turns instead. Because I only know them as Dem and Rep, I wonder when they’re going to talk politics. The Republican is dressed fancy and the Democrat is dumpy with a thick mustache. The Democrat talks about the new Fairway that just opened in town and how his wife breaks his balls when he buys peculiar culinary items. He talks about mustard and how he would never eat regular mustard, how “you would have to be out of your friggin’ mind to eat regular mustard.” He buys all types of exotic mustard. The Republican says he likes Grey Poupon and rolls the R. The Democrat says that he especially likes cranberry honey mustard. The Democrat threatens to go to Fairway with his girlfriend if his wife doesn’t like him buying exotic mustards. The Republican laughs and says, “girlfriend--the sex I enjoy without my wife.”
Randy and Klein are still there when we return from Home Depot. They are still supervising my coworkers as they assemble the generators. Periodically, Randy and Klein ask questions like, “you guys need anything?” and make comments like, “show us a more efficient way to use the socket wrench.” I think about how ES&S self-identifies as an organization that provides “integrated solutions”. I think about how the taxpayer-funded Board of Elections is like a host for ES&S and its parasitic machines. I think about how host also means sacramental bread or the body of Christ, and comes from the Latin hostia, sacrificial victim.
Monday, November 5th, 2012
My coworkers and I get to the warehouse and talk about which of the BOE guys are the most chill. Then we talk about an article with a harsh condemnation of ES&S that came out in the most recent Harper’s. “Our supervisors seem so apolitical,” we muse. “They could care less about policy and legislation.” But isn’t that what two party politics is? It’s precisely apolitical. It’s not about the art and process of governing.
Suddenly the media arrives and all the BOE workers try and kick them out of the warehouse. There’s a lot of commotion and someone turns up Kiss really loud. Then the excitement dies down and we talk about Chuck Hagel and how he was on the ES&S board while he was campaigning for US Senate in 1996, a seat he won in an upset. We receive an email from a coworker with a link to the Harper’s article, reminding us, “please do not circulate the link via your work emails.”
I ask my coworker why he didn’t vote for Jill Stein. I tell him his vote doesn’t count in New York. There’s a combustion of energy as the media sneaks its way in the back door. We are told under no circumstances are we to talk to the media. Randy and Klein tell us when the media comes by, we are to stop reading magazines and pretend to look busy. One of the ES&S people mentions “ballot fatigue,” which is the term describing ballots that become saggy or depressed by overuse and/or neglect. Someone asks me if I’m taking notes on the operation. BOE workers tell stories about what they lost in the storm.
When we go for lunch, an ES&S supervisor, Scott gives us a motivational speech. He tells us that “the name of the game tomorrow is that we’re puppet masters right? We don’t touch anything right? The number one rule tomorrow is that voting doesn’t stop. The emergency ballot bin is a backup plan for if the scanner jams.” We are to assure the pollworkers and voters that all votes will be counted by the County later. We are never to touch the machines ourselves. We are to advise the Democrat and the Republican on our rover team to perform all maintenance. Scott concludes his speech with the advice to carry our phone chargers with us because chargers are a great way to test outlets. “We know what our phones look like when they’re charging,” he says.
On the way back to the warehouse we bring up the Harper’s article to Scott. He assures us that there’s no way a voting machine company could influence the election without a huge conspiracy of Democrats and Republicans agreeing together to throw an election. It’s like having to have mommy and daddy there any time you want to change the channel. Scott tells us that the easiest way to throw an election is by stuffing ballots.
After work we all go to a hotel bar. Some guy tells me his wife works at the Nassau County BOE and I would recognize her easily because she is one of only three hot women that work there. I tell him I don’t know who she is. The ES&S people talk about bids and contracts and the guy with a hot wife asks me what my name is and then asks me to cheers with him four times and beckons me for a fistbump. On the TV at the bar they are talking about voter fraud and the ES&S guys giggle and drink. The ES&S guy who likes to repeat himself asks me if it’s safe to live in Brooklyn.
Tuesday, November 6th, 2012 (election day)
In the morning I am instructed to go out on a rover team with Leo and Steve, the Democrat and the Republican. We’re supposed to be on call to support poll sites in case there are any problems with the voting machines. Like Scott said, “voting never stops.” We’re given rental cars because of the gas shortage due to Sandy. The cars are supposed to come with full tanks, but ours is empty. The higher-ups tell us about a secret County gas station that will fill us up because we’re doing God’s work.
Leo is driving. He asks Steve and I what we want to listen to on the radio. We say we don’t care. Leo puts on the Hits of Today station which is playing Ja-Rule. It’s 5:30am. Leo asks Steve if his house was affected by the hurricane. Steve says no and Leo tells him that he’s lucky. When we arrive at the secret gas station we are told that we are only allowed five gallons because of the gas crisis. Leo threatens to call the County Commissioners on the secret gas station attendant if they don’t let us fill up. Leo and Steve are very upset about the gas situation. I act mad too so they’ll think I’m normal. The three of us will be in this car until 10pm. Leo asks “what the fuck can you do with five gallons?”
I realize that, as a general rule, Leo and Steve ignore me. The gas attendant tells us we’ll be cut off soon. He tells us, “I don’t make the rules around here.” Steve tells the attendant that “we’re federally mandated right now because we’re processing a presidential election.” The attendant says that he doesn’t care. Leo asks the attendant what his name is. The attendant says “Devin Elliot, but you can call me supervisor Elliot.” Leo thanks Mr. Elliot sarcastically and asks for his card. Mr. Elliot tells us to move the car. Leo tells Mr. Elliot that he’ll be receiving a call from the County Commissioners very shortly. Leo laments that on election day we need to deal with these motherfuckers.
We head to a poll site that’s in a school to see what’s going on. The pollworkers tell us that the ballots are jamming in the machines. I tell Leo and Steve that I’m not supposed to touch the machines. It becomes clear that Leo and Steve have no idea how to fix the machines. I pick up the machine and forgive myself for breaking Scott’s rules. The machine is broken so I grab a new part from “the truck,” which is what Steve and Leo call our rental car. Leo schmoozes with one of the pollworkers.
The people on the Hits of Today radio station are talking about how Twitter changed an ellipsis from counting as three characters to counting as only one. Steve gets a phone call asking us to do a repair at another polling site, but Leo decides we better go to Dunkin’ Donuts to get refueled first.
Leo is upset about the long donut line. I'm still trying to figure out who is the Dem and who is the Rep, but every time I settle on a guess, I guilt myself out of it, chiding myself for stereotyping. The three of us talk about the popular vote and the electoral college. Steve asks whether I think Texas will be a blue or red state this time. I say that I think Bruce Springsteen should run for president because I think that saying it might make them like me. Steve says that a lot of people love that guy. Leo brings up the candidacy of Schwarzenegger and then we talk about electoral politics as a popularity contest. Steve thinks that, in choosing Palin, McCain discounted “the women vote.” Steve says, “since all women are jealous of attractive women, all women hate Sarah Palin and didn’t want to vote Republican in 2008.” He adds that “Hillary Clinton is ugly and that’s why all women love her. You can’t forget about the women vote,” Steve concludes, and Leo nods in agreement.
As we drive to the next poll site I give myself a time limit to figure out who’s the Dem and who’s the Rep. Considering the fact that their political alignments define their public lives, Leo and Steve’s amicable rapport is a head scratcher. The next poll site is in a tent. The traditional location, a nearby elementary school, has been badly damaged in the hurricane, and the tent has been set up and equipped with generators and space heaters. The pollworkers are also divided into Dems and Reps and when we perform maintenance on the machines at a polling site we must corral one of each to ensure bipartisan approval.
The problem at this poll site appears to be a paper jam, which I am able to clear quickly. In my experience, paper jams occur regularly on functional ES&S machines. The voting machines run Windows 95 and most of the hardware is recycled from old computers. Inasmuch as this is the first presidential election in New York that these machines have been used, we expect to see a lot more paper jams. In smaller elections, there are usually less than 100 ballots cast through each scanning machine. Today, we are already seeing tallies in the 500s, and it’s not even noon.
I speak with one of the pollworkers who calls another pollworker “Miss Professional.” I agree with him that she takes her job a little too seriously. He assures me that he doesn’t take anything in life seriously. He tells me that there’s a word that perfectly describes this self-serious woman: officious. “It means exactly the way she’s behaving,” he says. “It comes from the word office.” He asks me, “do you know how in an office things are supposed to run in a very certain, very mechanical way?” I say yes. “Officious,” he repeats. Another man says he has a different word for her: kvetch. I ask the first man how he would describe himself. He shouts, “twisted!” I think of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I tell another pollworker to press the OK button no matter what.
Back in the car, the Hits of Today morning talk show is still playing and we listen to the host make a prank call. He calls a woman who he knows hates Barack Obama. The host pretends to be from a church organization called Barack of Ages. The prankee says that she won’t support a socialist and a communist. The host asks the prankee if she’s aware that Obama increased funding for national parks and national forests by 10%. The prankee responds that she doesn’t go to the park or the forest. The host asks the prankee if she’s Black. She says yes and asks the host if he’s surprised that she’s Black. He responds that he’s not surprised that she’s Black, just that she’s not supporting one of her own people. The host tells her she should be proud of Mr. Obama because he represents her. The host reveals that the whole thing is a joke and he puts a friend of the prankee on the other line, a woman who supplied the prankee’s phone number. The host repeats the word ladies, as if he’s trying to lull them to sleep. Leo and Steve listen raptly.
Leo talks about the Great Recession. How it’s the hardest time right now to be the president, to be in any political office. “People out of work, people losing jobs. They’re closing down post offices, they’re firing County workers, education is cutting, things you’ve never seen before. People criticizing teachers, criticizing politicians.” Steve agrees with all of Leo’s points. Steve compares the situation to a baseball team, saying “when a team’s playing lousy, everyone blames the coach.” “And that’s why Obama might lose the election today,” adds Leo. “The great part about this country is if you don’t like someone you can just vote him out.”
Leo explains that he studied political science at Stony Brook and his dream was always to become an elected official and help people. Steve tells Leo that he’s a very likable dude so he would make a perfect elected official. Leo continues, monologuing about how people need help for their sidewalks and garbage, “simple things like that.” He says that “all you gotta do is make phone calls and really be there for people.”
We don’t receive any calls for a long while. We talk about Leo’s recent local political campaign. Leo says that there can’t be campaign contribution limits because, for instance, he spent $8,000 on one mailing during his campaign. I ask him why it costs so much to mail a bunch of postcards. He says he mailed postcards to 30,000 people and that’s $0.45 per postcard, so that comes out to $13,000. “You also gotta pay the print shop.”
“We’re not going to know about Bush’s presidency for another ten years,” says Steve, “we won’t know until everything settles down in the Middle East. Like if it was worth it or not.” I ask Steve how he would know if it was worth it. He says that, “if we’re still having beef with them and if Israel and them are still fighting and if we’re still over there patrolling, then it wasn’t a success. But if those countries are more like second-world countries instead of third world countries,” Steve argues, “then I guess you break even.”
Steve asks Leo if he should get engaged. Leo advises that if it’s been four years it’s time. We drive by a woman who is pretty. Leo comments, “if her nose wasn’t so big…” Steve says that he likes girls who are natural and that he respects this woman for not getting a nose job. We drive around looking for another Dunkin Donuts. We fade in and out of sleep.
After a longer nap I am awoken by a panic. Both Steve and Leo are talking on their phones to their BOE supervisors back at the warehouse. We are told that there are hundreds of paper jams across the County, lines of voters are hours long, and that pollworkers are livid. Leo and Steve tell their supervisors that we haven’t received any calls about the paper jam crisis, that we’ve been sitting in “the truck” for hours, waiting to be called for technical support. I ask whether it’s because the phones they gave us don’t work. No one says anything. Someone turns off the Hits of Today. We are told to return to the warehouse to regroup.
Leo and Steve tell me to calm down, to stop worrying. They decide we should have a story to tell their supervisors when we get back to the warehouse. I wonder why we can’t tell the truth. Leo and Steve settle on a story about how only poll sites that are in predominantly Black neighborhoods had issues and how we were assigned to “a nice area of the County.”
Back at the warehouse, the Democrat BOE supervisor named Claudia calls every rover team into a huddle. She asks if we think the paper jams are caused by pollworkers not ripping the ballots cleanly across the perforated edges of the ballot books. We all say yes. Claudia asks if it’s because so many pollworkers canceled after the hurricane. We say yes. Claudia says that many of the emergency ballot bins are filling up because the machines have been jammed for hours. Even after the pollworkers empty the emergency bins, they are filling up a second and third time. She tells us that some pollworkers are emptying the emergency bins into garbage cans. These are ballots that haven’t been counted yet. “Voting never stops,” says Scott. “The emergency bin ballots will be counted later,” someone says. The new plan is that the rover teams will drive around to all the poll sites in their precinct, clear the jammed machines and empty out the emergency bins into envelopes. But before we leave we have to wait for the envelopes to arrive.
I trade a coworker an ativan for an adderall. I rejoin my rover team and the three of us head out to poll sites. The first place is a middle school partially smashed by a downed tree. The place is packed and there are lines snaking out the door. The pollworkers are very happy to see us. “Why are you taking the ballots away?” the pollworkers ask us. We explain that we are fixing the paper jams and emptying the emergency ballot bins into special manila folders. The pollworkers tell us that they’ve been instructed not to remove any ballots from the machines until police officers come at the end of the night to supervise. When I get to the first voting machine, there are a dozen cast ballots hanging in the back of the scanner and I feel sinful touching them in order to clear the jam. I must make sure that a bipartisan team of pollworkers is watching me at all times.
Meanwhile, voters are being sent to this jammed machine to cast their votes. I ask the pollworkers if they can pause voting for twenty minutes while I’m repairing this machine, but the line is too long and people are getting impatient. So while I perform surgery on the machine, voters reach under me to stuff their ballots into the overflowing emergency ballot bins. Leo and Steve are rubbing their fingers on their smartphones. “Voting never stops,” says Scott. A mother and her six year old daughter come up to me and hand me their ballot. I tell them sorry, but can they either wait a minute or if they are in a hurry they can duck under my arms and put their ballots in a slot overflowing with ballots.
On another machine, the emergency ballot bin is overfilled and I need to tear the ballots to get them out. I am surprised that the voters don’t seem angry. Many pretend not to see what we are doing, and even those who ask us “what’s going on down there” seem to trust us when we say that these ballots will be counted later. Leo keeps repeating that, “it’s a bipartisan effort here.” The pollworkers ask if it’s a problem that there are now hundreds of ripped ballots. Leo assures them that they will be hand-counted later. The pollworkers say that they want everyone’s vote to count. It seems unclear to me whether these shredded ballots will actually be counted, but I remind myself that it’s all a charade, that the electoral college means these votes already don’t count.
The rest of the night is a reprise of this scene. I start to teach the savvier pollworkers to clear jams themselves. This is definitely against the rules, as no one except the bipartisan BOE workers are allowed to touch the machines. My knowledge of the machines and my ability to make problems go away makes Leo and Steve start to respect me.
One pollworker, who we meet towards the end of the night, is distraught by the corruption. “When and how are they going to count these ballots? It’s going to take a long time. The paper’s all screwed up. This is going to be Florida number two.” He says that our corporate shenanigans are pathetic. He tells me he tried to vote around noon but was unable because “it’s like a warzone out there. People waiting in line for hours to get gas, walking around with those plastic containers. And then all this bullshit going on here. The governor tells us one thing and the Board of Elections tells us another. And then there’s the LIPA crisis. The electricians have been working 16 hour days and don’t have time to go back home so they’re voting absentee.” Leo tells the man about all the blacked-out neighborhoods. Most people are still without power more than a week after the hurricane. The pollworker says that he hasn’t had power either and he’s lost all of his food. He lost $2500 worth of insulin for his wife.
Another pollworker at the same site gives me what he calls good old fashioned advice: “appreciate life but don’t take advantage of it.” He says, “I don’t know if your dad gave it to you.” The pollworker asks me if his advice makes sense. He says if I don’t heed his advice that something will bite me in the ass in the end. He tells me that everyone is a moron. He tells me that the electoral vote is going to dictate New York. That it’s predetermined who’s going to win.
Leo, Steve, and I go to McDonalds for dinner before heading back to the warehouse. The first states are already being called. Things are looking good for Obama. I know for a fact that none of the votes in this entire county have been counted. On the scanning machines, once ballots are scanned, the data is tallied on a USB stick that is connected to the machine. At the end of the night, the police are supposed to gather all the USB sticks and ballots and bring them back to the warehouse to be counted. Back at the warehouse, it takes hours to tabulate all the USB sticks. Scott will end up staying there until 2:00am to supervise this process. But when the New York races are all called before midnight with 99% reporting, I wonder if Nassau County is the 1%, or whether something else is going on. I spend all of Wednesday sleeping until Frank, my subcontracting boss, wakes me up with a call asking if I can go back to the warehouse tomorrow because they need help counting ballots.
Thursday, November 8th, 2012
When I get back to the warehouse, Tony is ragging. The place where we normally work is cordoned off with police tape. BOE workers tell me that all the machines have been impounded by the County, that no one is to touch or go near them. There is a policeman guarding the impounded zone, a fenced-in area called “the Cage.” The policeman guarding the cage is watching TV on his iPad and sleeping.
On the tables are huge stacks of ballots, many of them torn. There are chunks of ballots strewn across the banquet table. “This one voted for all Republicans except for Obama,” someone says. “On this ballot they just filled in the circles so it looks like the big dipper,” says someone else. These are the ballots we rescued from the emergency bins on Tuesday night. “I am here to count those ballots,” I announce. “Is that a missing chunk of a ballot?” I ask. They tell me that they looked but they couldn’t find its other half.
At one point, a BOE worker named Billy takes me to the basement to show me the old lever machines, which were built in the 1930s and used in the New York City area until 2009. “This is what the machines have looked like since the 1890s.” I realize that ES&S’s profit hinges on their ability to convince local governments that their lever machines aren’t good anymore.
Billy is still on the fence about the ES&S machines. He says he likes the DS200’s (the scanning voting machines), but asks me why the battery only lasts two hours if election day is 15 hours. But Billy is sure that in time they will improve on the battery. “They’re making batteries smaller and smaller. Soon we’ll be voting on the internet,” he says. He asks me why they really need a paper trail. “For a recount,” I say. “Or if someone accuses someone else of tampering.” Billy says that they’re always accusing someone of tampering. I ask him what happened to Automatic Voting Corporation, the company that makes the lever machines. He explains that about 10 years ago, they filed bankruptcy.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Today I notice that the policeman stationed on the second floor is wearing a bulletproof vest. There’s a mess of halloween candy across the tables. Everyone’s eating the good candy and leaving the lollipops. They tell me that they’re still not ready to count the ballots. Frank tells us to continue on repairs, but adds that we should just look busy. Frank says that Nassau County likes it when the techs look busy. Randy from ES&S tells us how in Omaha, they run the ballots through the machines in controlled environments and there’s never a paper jam. My coworkers and I play a game where we try to guess who is the Dem and who is the Rep in each pair. The train back to the city is crowded with mothers and their daughters headed to a Justin Beiber concert at the Barclays Center.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Today, the BOE workers will finally begin scanning the uncounted ballots and I’ll be there to clear any paper jams and keep a log of why the jams occurred and on what machines. I notice that today, in addition to the policemen, there are people in elegant clothes and makeup. These must be the local politicians. They mill around and talk with one another, but they do not attempt to ingratiate themselves with the BOE milieu. The teams are reminded that if a machine jams, they are not supposed to clear it; instead, they must get me to fix it. Randy tells me not to tell the BOE workers why a machine jammed. I am to make a note of it but keep it to myself.
Suddenly Claudia is screaming that no unscanned ballots go back in the bin. All unscanned ballots come out of the bin. “There’s a confusion here,” someone else says. “She means unused ballots. You mean unused ballots, not unscanned ballots.” I talk to Billy. He tells me that Claudia’s got to get her terms right. That she means unused ballots but she’s saying unscanned ballots. He goes up to Claudia and tries to plead with her but she’s not listening and tells him, “I don’t have to listen to you.” Tom, the Republican counterpart to Claudia, also tries to plead with her but with no success.
Billy tells me that James is really Father James, an ex-priest. He left the priesthood to get married because, “he loved this girl. That’s why he’s so mellow,” Billy says, “although we’ve egged him on to the point where he’ll curse someone out.” He tells me that this process is not going to work if Claudia is going to talk down to people like him and Father James. “We’re all human beings,” Billy says. “We need to talk to each other like I’m talking to you right now. No one’s perfect,” he says. “Everyone has ideas. Some are good and some are bad. If we get all the good ones together from everybody then it’s going to work. Even from a grunt on the bottom like me.” I ask Billy how Father James met his wife. He says he doesn’t know but what he does know is that Father James is finally calming down about the Claudia situation. He tells me that the important thing to remember is that no one took a test for this job. Even the important people like Claudia and James. They were all just appointed.
Randy talks about how he’s been assigned to a lot of fun accounts like Hawaii. Another ES&S staffer, Ann, talks about how she always gets sent to boring places like Louisiana. Ann says New York is unique: “normally one person is running the whole show but in New York there’s a Dem and a Rep for everything.” Randy says that government is too big nowadays. I ask Randy whether New York has a long history of administration by bipartisan teams. He tells me that yes it goes back to the 1930s and 1940s when the police oversaw the elections. And the two leaders of the police force were a Democrat and a Republican, so when the police relinquished control of the elections and a Board of Elections was created, they just continued the tradition. But Randy doesn’t know why other states haven’t continued the Dem and Rep tradition. Ann says to Randy, “look at all the trivia you know.”
Ann talks about how it always cracks her up how people are so ready to blame the election problems on the machine when it’s usually the fault of the user. I ask Ann why the pollworkers aren’t trained in how to use the machines. She says that most technologically proficient people have other jobs that they can’t just leave for one day out of the year. Ann explains that the city hires 35,000 pollworkers for election day and there isn’t enough funding to pay them a decent wage. I ask how much the pollworkers make for the day. Randy says that they’re up to $250 now for a 16-hour day. I made $700 during election day. I ask why they don't pay the pollworkers more. Randy answers that, “most people don’t do it for the money, they do it to be a good citizen.”
Ann tells a story about how the people in Omaha always tease her about her pink fuzzy slippers because she gets to work from home most of the time. So last week when she had to go out to Omaha she wore her pink fuzzy slippers and everyone laughed. At the end of the night, Claudia stays to talk with Randy. She is frustrated with ES&S because she feels they are keeping the paper jam issue a secret. Claudia says that she’s asked ES&S for the past three years, as long as Nassau county has been a customer, to look into the paper jam issue. Randy says corporate is doing a lot of research on the issue. Claudia says that she’s asked for the data but they won’t give it to her. Randy says that he’s brought this to Omaha, that the customer be granted access to data about the products that they own. He tells Claudia that he will give her answers, he promises that he will give her answers. Claudia says that she feels offended. Claudia says that the BOE is told, “maybe it’s the paper, maybe it’s the machines, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that. Why do the machines have to be so sensitive?”
On the way out, Randy tells me that today was a good day because it showed the BOE workers that in a controlled environment, everything works out fine. “And some of those machines were taking shit,” he says. Ballots that he would have bet big money that the machine wouldn’t take them. Randy says, “you can’t control pollworkers and you can’t control voters.”
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