Wow.

One of the problems with this problem is that I hide, so I thought I was alone in this. What a relief to read all these letters from others suffering from this syndrome. Yet, it distresses me, too, that so many of us are hiding what appears to be a common dysfunction.

I recently decided to tackle this. I’ve had lots of therapy, was on anti-depressants for five years, have a master’s degree in psychology, lead personal growth workshops (when I’m not avoiding my work) and still my avoidance behavior was spiraling out of control.

I know that my problem is driven by anxiety. For me there is a hormonal component that is related to menopause. Natural supplements are helping.

But also, there is a cognitive component that is related to habits. May I suggest a book?

The author, David Allen, writes about his method in Getting Things Done. He contends that the nature of our work has changed in the last 50 years. Work used to be clearly defined. It was all about making things and moving things: do this now do that.

But we no longer have those clearly defined boundaries in our work or lives: things just spread out endlessly in all directions. Yet Allen says, “it’s hard to stay on track without rails”. His system was personally painful for me to put into place, but I was desperate so I did it. It’s been 3 months since I set it up. It’s easy to maintain and the system is working. I’m getting things done and feeling much better about my life.

LW, I hope it helps to know you’re not alone. Thanks for writing.

Please note that Connecticut uses clunky old lever-style voting machines and the final vote tally matched the CBS exit poll results.

So, exit polls work all over the world and in Connecticut ... but not in Ohio? not in Florida? not in the 2004 presidential election?

People, we still have some serious work to do to guarantee fair elections in the United States.

I answered the call from Pollworkers for Democracy (http://www.verifythevote.org) to be a poll judge here in Indiana. Our “training” was much too brief (less than 60 minutes) and consisted mainly of a Q&A session about Indiana’s new travesty of a voter ID law. We learned nothing about setting up or troubleshooting the DRE machines, probably because I went to the Democratic party’s training and our county elections are staffed by Republican Inspectors who are responsible for running elections in each the precinct. I was appalled to discover how the Democrats have been systematically disenfranchised by the electoral system in this wealthy Republican county. So far this has been an eye-opening experience and I look forward to hearing back from my fellow first timers after the election on November 7th.

I was a first-time Democratic poll judge in Indiana, recruited by Pollworkers for Democracy. www.pollworkersfordemocracy.org

What a terrific experience!

My experience was much like yours. I was the only newbie on our team of five. I was impressed with the integrity and good humor that everyone brought to the job that day.

Several things stood out to me, all of which happened at the end of the day.

Of course, we were exhausted. Our day started at 5am, polls were open from 6am-6pm, and we had the votes tallied and machines packed by 7pm. Being so tired it would have been very easy to make a mistake, but the system was filled with so many cross-checks that we caught our errors and corrected them.

Our first line of defense – honest, careful pollworkers - worked in our precinct. What went on inside the machines is another story entirely. As pollworkers, we were united in our belief that hackable voting machines are a grave threat to our democracy and assuring election integrity should not be a partisan issue.

I accompanied the Republican Inspector (who ran our precinct) to the courthouse to turn in the tallies and return the machines.

It was an amazing sight to see hundreds and hundreds of pollworkers from all over the county converging on the courthouse to return voting machines and envelopes filled with votes. Burly men directing traffic and off-loading voting machines. Lines of pollworkers snaking through the bowels of the courthouse to deliver ballots and tallies. Tables and boxes and piles of tabulations. Candidates waiting for results. The election board meeting in a glass walled room to address an absentee ballot snafu.

I visualized this going on in thousands of counties all over the country and was a bit overwhelmed to be a small part of such a huge civic undertaking.

However, I heard one horror story that curled my hair. While waiting in one of the snakey lines, I met a 19 year-old man who had been recruited the weekend before to be a Republican Inspector. With little training and 4 novice pollworkers to assist him, he was assigned a newly created precinct. They had problems getting their machines set-up and running. They had nearly 100 voters show up to vote in the wrong precinct and had to help them find the correct precinct. He said he called the courthouse dozens of time asking for help, got the run-around, was transferred, disconnected and hung-up on. Then they had problems closing the polls and tallying the votes. But somehow this 19 year-old managed to hold the polls open for 400+ people to vote on Tuesday.

Please sign up to be a pollworker for the next election. America needs you.