Election Day reflections from a newbie poll worker [View all]

Gasp. What really happened in the NJ gubernatorial election!

Fun read. Wait 'til you get to the end and see the author's credentials.

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By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist
By Karen Bonuck

I worked the polls for the first time this past Election Day. It was eye-opening, on several counts. First, the day is long and hard, even under normal circumstances. This year’s statewide roll-out of new electronic poll book iPads and, in some districts, new machines, complicated the task.

We arrived at 5:15 am. I was with another poll newbie and two veterans; I’ll refer to them as Rachel and Rich. These longtime Oradell residents knew many of the 500-plus voters we processed. Rich, who I mistakenly called Frank for half the day (he was too gracious to correct me even though we wore name tags), took over setting up the (old) machines.

After Rachel laid out materials (e.g., sample English, Spanish, and Korean ballots) and had us all write guesses of how many voters we would process on ‘secret ballots’ — a quaint custom, the outcome of which she added to a well-worn green folder.

The other newbie (who won the $4 kitty) and I worked like synchronized swimmers to set up the iPads, printers and yards of cables. Watching the clock tick toward 6 a.m., we wrestled tricky cables into printers and powered through red warnings on the iPad and printer mishaps. We just finished when the first voter walked through the door. There was not a single tech problem throughout the day.

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