On Tuesday I will be an election judge in Chicago for the 3rd time. Our training is slightly better than the one described in the story. We use mostly optical-scan paper ballots, but each polling station has one Sequoia machine, which generates a paper tape copy in a sealed cassette. This machine is there mostly for blind voters (we have one in my precinct), and we do know how to set it up.

However, the general view of the author is pretty much on target. Judges are volunteers without much training, and voting rules are arcane and old-fashioned. Each rule was instituted to avoid a problem in the past, like inserting pre-filled ballots or reuse of IDs. The election board is made up of bored civil servants and lower-level local politicians who couldn't get a job in private business.

The upshot of this is that most modern election conspiracy theories fall apart when confronted by the general amateurishness of the process. Instead of Republican hackers in an underground bunker inserting trapdoors in the code, the election system is run by 70-year old grandmothers who feed ballots to local officials who don't even have e-mail. The entire system is so radically decentralized and run with such minimal competance that the idea of making tiny changes to tip Federal elections is absurd. Local officials are far more interested in local races, and there is no incentive for them to tamper with the larger ones. There is no plausible motivation for the local people to interfere, and there are no obvious places to hook into the system and subvert it.

If you want to help your fellow citizens have free and fair elections, become a judge for the next election. We need tech-savvy, energetic people to help. Its a long day and sometimes frustrating, but it will give you an unparalleled view into how elections are actually run. The problem isn't dishonesty, its neglect.

The poll workers are the same people who seem honestly baffled by the electronic debit card scanners at any store. Since the median age of the poll workers is higher than their IQ, they're no help at all for much of anything. But for a real laugh - we have polling in Middle Schools and there is some discussion about whether they should check for criminals who wouldn't ordinarily be allowed on school grounds. Ergo - anyone with a record would be prohibited from voting. We also have a polling place IN a police station, just in case. In case of what, no one can tell but I'm sure it's about terrorists or methlabs or illegal aliens or space aliens.

... and was actually impressed with the organization of the effort. Still, some of the questions from the attendees could make one wonder how things will go next Tuesday.

I took notes of my own, even though we are supposed to receive a packet before Tuesday with all of the information from the presentation in it.

The most important things I learned, in addition to checking the vote totals at the beginning and end of the day:

If there is a problem or an issue, first talk to the Judge of Elections about it, and try to get it resolved.

Then, call someone on the legal team to report the issue, whether it was resolved or not, in order to have the issue documented, and to get help if needed.

Although provisional ballots are allowed, they should be a last resort. It is always optimal to have a voter vote in the correct precinct, and on the proper voting machine, with the proper ballot of candidates, if at all possible. In other words, make the calls necessary to determine the correct precinct, to arrange for a ride, etc.

Finally, if there have been irregularities, or if the total number of voters doesn't agree with the number of voters who have signed, then encourage the minority judge not to sign off on the results, thus allowing for a follow-up investigation.

Things we were advised to watch out for: intimdation tactics, including asking for ID's when only first-time voters are required (in my area) to show an ID; asking voters to remove campaign clothing or accessories (they're allowed to wear it-- though inside poll workers are not); distraction techniques that keep workers or voters from attending to business; voters who take to long to vote when there is a line of people waiting-- three minutes is maximum...

So Diebold has shown that we can't have faith in the electronic voting machines, and this article (and every experience I've had voting) shows that we can't have faith in the poll workers. Excellent.

The "Editor's Choice" letter is wrong about how easy it is to tamper with an election, however. The fact that it was given an "Editor's Choice" show that the author has already given up on learning to educate her fellow poll workers, choosing instead to revel in the idea that ignorance and supposed decentralization are the best defense against vote tampering. Here's what my first google search came up with regarding deep flaws in Diebold machines, though there are better examples (princeton.edu link) http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ .

It's my opinion that Mrs. Paul doesn't know enough about the system to come to the conclusion that it's broken (though it certainly is). I hope that $100 comes in handy, though.

After reading "Confessions of an Ohio poll worker," I felt both reassured as well as continued concern about how the elections here in Cuyahoga County, Ohio will go next week. I became quite alarmed, for example, to find that the mentally disabled man I rent a room to got hired as a poll worker by the Cuyahoga County, Ohio Board of Elections. This person's mental disability is so severe, he does not even know what a storm window is, as I discovered when the weather changed and it was time to put the screens up and storm windows down. When I asked him whether he had put the storm windows down, he responded in such a manner as to indicate he had no understanding of what a storm window is and I had to point out and demonstrate to him what a storm window is, and how to adjust it for winter weather. So when the author of the "Confessions" article described a man who "smelled bad" among her fellow poll worker trainees, it reaffirmed my grave concerns about how the election will fare in light of the Cuyahoga County Board of Election's decision to hire persons clearly incapable of performing the job of poll worker, as exemplified by my mentally disabled tenant's having been hired by the Board as a poll worker and the "Confessions" author's reference to the hiring of yet another probably disabled person who "smelled bad" (persons who suffer from severe mental illness, for example, often smell bad due to the very sad, albeit common symptom of poor self-care such as poor hygiene) whose disability might prohibit such persons from being able to adequately fulfill the duties and responsibilities of poll worker. God save our democracy.