Thank you :) I picked up my red bag and signs on Saturday. On Tuesday, my husband woke me at 5a.m. with a glass of kenya AA espresso. I arrived at the polling place a bit before 6 - placed the "Vote Here" signs at the entrance driveways and in front of the main door. I swore my fellow pollworkers in by asking everyone to read the oath of office and sign it. I created and signed the time-sheet as well. I unsealed and inserted the data cards and locked them in and we set and signed the printer rolls, locked the print cartridges, and turned on the machines in between 6 and 6:30a. I unpacked the poll list and signature book and the people who were ballot judge and poll list judge took their places. One person coded the voting cards and gave basic instructions to return them to us when they finished. We had no missing voting cards at day's end. I rotated between tasks as people needed breaks for lunch etc. or when I noticed that one of us needed a break. We worked as a team to cover the tasks. We opened the polls right at 6:30a.m. We were told to encourage people to use any machine in any precinct area. The lines never got beyond 5 or 6 people waiting for an open machine. We had 4 machines assigned to each precinct.

Our precinct (Medina County - Brunswick City - City Hall) had 298 voters by 3p.m. Our total was over 400 people. My team of 4 pollworkers - two democrats, two republicans - I know I was one of the democrats but I have no idea what affiliation the other 3 were. We talked about our families, golf, bowling, dogs, cats, and how we were working together in the process but not our political affiliations. In a general election it is not appropriate to ask voters their political affiliations in any case - only in primaries does this become a legitimate query.

I - as presiding judge - helped 2 people find their real precinct and sent 2 people who had moved recently from other counties over to the board of elections. We gave out 6 provisional ballots. The provisional ballots looked very much like the absentee ballot except they were put in an envelope which they sealed and affirmed their voting status and I signed and affirmed what the reason for provisional balloting were. None of us wanted to stop anyone from voting. If we had observers they did not make themselves known. There were no obvious attempts to influence anyone in our polling area. We offered basic assistance with the voting cards - some people thought they should be swiped like credit cards and twice someone got confused about the candidate choices for governor and thought it was a technical problem. We adjusted the machines for a wheel-chair bound person who wanted to vote herself and not be assisted. It does require two people to adjust - one to hold onto the machine and one to adjust the legs height.

We had to ask 2 people to not use their cell phones while voting. We noticed one person who kept reaching into his pocket while he was voting but I wandered over and he seemed to be doing something personal rather than messing with the machine :). We had three loud complainers - complaining about the process in general, one drunk (nice though), several people who said they came out to vote for the people that some of our most virulent attack ads were targetting, because they were sick of the attack ads they said. We had four people who I observed by their ID were voting first time and I shook their hands. A few people tried to discuss issues with us but my team looked at me! and I said - "we can smile and let you talk and we will listen but we cannot discuss political issue with you while we are working". I said - "I don't mind listening but I won't comment". Once I had to change the subject - to the glorious beaches I've been reading about in his birth country - because a recently naturalized citizen grew so animated on the subject of the pleasures of voting and whom he had chosen to vote for. We had three recently naturalized citizens who identified themselves as such without any prompting. Their IDs were the same as anyone else's. Many of our people came in family groups - At one point it seemed that an entire neighborhood all came over together to vote. I asked about the propriety of bringing cookies in next year - and was told this was okay as long as I bring enough for everyone... I'm contemplating 500 honey - oatmeal raisin cookies for 2008 ;)

Our Board of Elections people were easily reached by telephone until about 6:30p when all lines became busy. Our Director was answering the telephone personally after 4:30p. Our roving technical support guy gave us his personal cell so the printer problems were solved quickly. We did not close down the last machine until 7:35p because a voter came in right at 7:30. We kept our directions sheet handy and worked as a team to go along the line of machines, sign-off on the official cartridge which I sealed. Printed out copies, signed those and then I retrieved the data cartridges and sealed them as well. The poll list and signature book required two counts by two different pollworkers to match up. We finished closing by 8p.m. I drove everything over to our board of elections in Medina.

I was exhausted. My darling husband met me at the door with a tall glass of grapefruit juice and cherry brandy with lots of ice and updated me on the returns and excitement in Cuyahoga County (look it up) while I soaked in a hot bath.

The Columbus - Franklin County 'cartridges' sounds very odd. I intend to ask about this.

Di