My day as a poll worker

I showed up at the Baptist church fellowship hall at 5:15 a.m. as instructed. The polls in my state open at 6 a.m. and close at 6 p.m. It was going to be a long day.

In all there were 8 poll workers assigned to this location, housing 2 precincts. Two of us had never been poll workers before but the others were long-time veterans. The "old-timers" instructed us newbies how to start setting up the voting booths while the others took on other tasks like posting the "vote here" signs and getting the AccuVote machine hooked up.

The machine itself is the size of a small fax machine -- voters slide in paper ballots to be scanned and recorded. But it sits on top of a large box. The ballots go through the machine and fall into the locked compartment below. At the beginning of the day a "zero tape" is run and everyone working at that polling place signs it, certifying that the count started at, well, nothing.

(more later)