Happy Super Tuesday! Working tonite at the provisional ballot processing station… still awaiting first returns…
2 Likes
You’re a better Californian than I. I just mailed my ballot.
1 Like
American politics is interesting to me as a non-American.
1 Like
I got transferred upstairs to vote by mail sorting/counting after a couple hours running provisional ballots from station to various racks and bins. Vote by mail needed more personnel because the county staff were waiting to start the closed-door ballot opening and scanning shift (you can apply to be an observer). They discovered they could cram 2x the number of sorters into the same space and obtain better than 200% productivity increase and improve sort accuracy. Once I signed out I took a look at the provisional ballot auditorium and they were still counting and stamping like mad! I’ve been a precinct clerk (index roster officer) for years, but the county has local voting centers now, and everyone is vote-by-mail-by-default also.
The biggest problem with having so many polling places is some of the venues are not actually configurable to our California Secretary of State’s standards. My last precinct election board convened in a regional park interpretive center essentially the size of a ranger’s hut. The year we first used it there was an open space with the nature interpretive materials along the walls. Then they hired a sculptor to convert the space into a fake zoo and a giant island landed in the middle of the space, leaving only an aisle along the walls—and the field inspector had complained about it for two years before the final precinct election. Now only quality venues are voting centers, and it is a decimation of the previous number, meaning less couriering. The in-person vote is now spread over 10 days. I think the new system has a lot of advantages even though I miss the precinct watch.
1 Like
The first thing the registrar’s office tells an election worker is to do their vote-by-mail before the election. I waited until I was hired to fill an election officer position to finally register to vote-by-mail. Voting in person was very cool 
to me, now I throw it into the blue usps mailbox on the way to the freeway.
One really cool thing happened in the auditorium: we were discussing a ballot exception, that an envelope belongs to a different county. Looked down at the envelope… sure enough it’s from Sacramento (we’re in Santa Clara County). Then I see the name and address. Dang! I went to high school with that guy, we sat next to each other in Ελληνικά Δημοτική class. For four years. Only five of us in the class, too! His middle name was there, too. He was extremely embarrassed about it. Brilliant hellenophone. Our teacher, Η Κυρία Ασιμοκοπούλου, a Spartan, had us all writing poetry and essays by 12th grade.
1 Like
HI, @HIRAM, can you help me out?
= Demotic Greek. OK, fine so far.
= The Lord ________
Is the blank the teacher’s surname or is it an honorific that I can’t decipher?
It means “Mrs. Asimokopoulos”. The L-rd == Ο Κύριος.
Ah, yes, of course; feminine form.
1 Like