Serving Uncle Sam...

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Tuesday was an extremely interesting day! My friend Nikki serves as the judge of elections in one of the local precincts. One of the things that means is that she is responsible for finding folks who can work all day on Election Day -- which is ME this year! :)

It was a crazy long day...I pulled into the polling place right after 6am to help set-up (still very dark out!)...

And, because I went with Nikki as the 2nd witness to drop off the ballots in Bellefonte afterwards, I got home right around 11:30pm! That's 17+ hours of good, steady work...I was tired, but had a great day.

Nikki named me the "Minority Inspector"...which we don't actually know what that is exactly... but I had to take an oath before the polls opened. In it, they used the word "vexatiously" (as in, "...nor will I vexatiously delay or refuse to receive any vote..."). I think I'm going to start working that into my everyday speech...what a great word!


I was mostly working the registration book throughout the day, which consisted of looking up voters' names, verifying their address for voter security, comparing their signatures to what was in the book, and reading off the spelling of their names for two identical log books that we had to keep. I had a great time interacting with all the people -- and there were quite a few from Calvary who lived up in that area!

The most eye-opening part of the day was all that we had to do after the polls closed... I'll tell you this -- after seeing the extra work required by our team, I don't think I will EVER do a write-in vote...especially not to be funny! It's unbelievable how much paperwork has to be done with each one of those, whether serious or not...

One thing that we DO know the Minority Inspector needs to do...

...is hold onto a sealed envelope of election records for ONE YEAR! Great, just when I am trying to clean OUT the house of extra junk... :)

I'm waiting for my government-issued paycheck in the mail (did you know that your poll workers get paid on a sliding scale, depending on how many people show up to vote at your location?!), but even without it -- it was a thoroughly interesting and educational day. I'm so glad I got to be a part!
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