🧵Welp.
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🧵Welp. It’s another #electionday in #virginia. In our 10th congressional district, the sitting representative, Gerry Connolly, died while in office. So today is a special election to fill that seat. For a few months of the current administration’s turmoil, I have had no rep on Congress at all.
I’m an #electionofficer in Fairfax County and I’ll be live posting during the #election day. I expect it to be sleepy.
I’ll make the whole thread replies to this post. And I’ll tag it all #electionofficer. So you can use that to either tune in or tune out as it suits you.
🧵1/
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🧵Welp. It’s another #electionday in #virginia. In our 10th congressional district, the sitting representative, Gerry Connolly, died while in office. So today is a special election to fill that seat. For a few months of the current administration’s turmoil, I have had no rep on Congress at all.
I’m an #electionofficer in Fairfax County and I’ll be live posting during the #election day. I expect it to be sleepy.
I’ll make the whole thread replies to this post. And I’ll tag it all #electionofficer. So you can use that to either tune in or tune out as it suits you.
🧵1/
First observation is that the day is starting off slow. 4 voters in our first 30 minutes. But what has been fast is setup. Last night we set up the precinct in record time. 90 minutes. That sounds long, but 2 hours is pretty common in my experience.
This morning we were ready to open with 20 minutes to spare. The county has been working hard to simplify and make it easier. Politicians have been working to make it more complicated.
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First observation is that the day is starting off slow. 4 voters in our first 30 minutes. But what has been fast is setup. Last night we set up the precinct in record time. 90 minutes. That sounds long, but 2 hours is pretty common in my experience.
This morning we were ready to open with 20 minutes to spare. The county has been working hard to simplify and make it easier. Politicians have been working to make it more complicated.
The pandemic, plus Virginia’s no-excuses mail-in voting means that lots of people signed up for absentee ballots a few years ago. But there are politicians stoking baseless rumours about #election fraud. So now some voters feel safer voting in person.
We have an entire poster about how to stop receiving unwanted automatic mail-in ballots. You see, you can’t have your ballot mailed to you and then drive up to the precinct and vote it in the machine. If you got an absentee ballot, your 3 choices are: drop it in the USPS as usual, put it in the envelope and drop it in an absentee drop box, or surrender that ballot here at the precinct and we will hand you a new one that you can vote on the machines.
This is probably the biggest source of tedious paperwork and #voter frustration in a typical #election.
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The pandemic, plus Virginia’s no-excuses mail-in voting means that lots of people signed up for absentee ballots a few years ago. But there are politicians stoking baseless rumours about #election fraud. So now some voters feel safer voting in person.
We have an entire poster about how to stop receiving unwanted automatic mail-in ballots. You see, you can’t have your ballot mailed to you and then drive up to the precinct and vote it in the machine. If you got an absentee ballot, your 3 choices are: drop it in the USPS as usual, put it in the envelope and drop it in an absentee drop box, or surrender that ballot here at the precinct and we will hand you a new one that you can vote on the machines.
This is probably the biggest source of tedious paperwork and #voter frustration in a typical #election.
I’m a reserve officer which means I go wherever they need me, and I get my assignments usually close to election day. One time it was at 6:30am on the day, 90 minutes after polls had opened. A couple times it has been a day or two before. Every #election is different.
I’m in a relatively large precinct today. 4400 voters. I’ll go ahead and make my guess. Out of 4400, I suspect 50% will vote at all (so, 2200). Out of that 2200, I’ll bet that a little over a third to maybe a half will vote in person. So on the low end, 800. On the high end I’d guess 1200. I’ll bet a ham sandwich that there won’t be more than 1200 today. That feels really unlikely.
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I’m a reserve officer which means I go wherever they need me, and I get my assignments usually close to election day. One time it was at 6:30am on the day, 90 minutes after polls had opened. A couple times it has been a day or two before. Every #election is different.
I’m in a relatively large precinct today. 4400 voters. I’ll go ahead and make my guess. Out of 4400, I suspect 50% will vote at all (so, 2200). Out of that 2200, I’ll bet that a little over a third to maybe a half will vote in person. So on the low end, 800. On the high end I’d guess 1200. I’ll bet a ham sandwich that there won’t be more than 1200 today. That feels really unlikely.
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Another sign that it is a sleepy “special election” is the total lack of canvassers and campaigners. Usually there’s a small table from each party and 1 or 2 people handing out ballots with their candidate’s name filled out. We have literally no one. Not even a sign or two with the party candidate’s name on it.
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Another sign that it is a sleepy “special election” is the total lack of canvassers and campaigners. Usually there’s a small table from each party and 1 or 2 people handing out ballots with their candidate’s name filled out. We have literally no one. Not even a sign or two with the party candidate’s name on it.
I’ve just discovered that I have access to some other numbers. Our precinct has 4400 voters and we have pre-issued only 256 absentee ballots in this election. Just 5.9% of eligible voters. We also have 289 (6.5%) who voted early at a satellite voting location, like a library or the government center.
So earlier I thought something like half might have voted absentee. I am WAY off. Unless 289+256 turns out to be half of the total voter turnout.
This explains a bit why we are staffed the way we are staffed. I was surprised to see 9 officers and 4 poll books. (7 and 3 is what I usually see). We are among the largest precincts and we have a really low absentee rate.
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R AodeRelay shared this topic
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I’ve just discovered that I have access to some other numbers. Our precinct has 4400 voters and we have pre-issued only 256 absentee ballots in this election. Just 5.9% of eligible voters. We also have 289 (6.5%) who voted early at a satellite voting location, like a library or the government center.
So earlier I thought something like half might have voted absentee. I am WAY off. Unless 289+256 turns out to be half of the total voter turnout.
This explains a bit why we are staffed the way we are staffed. I was surprised to see 9 officers and 4 poll books. (7 and 3 is what I usually see). We are among the largest precincts and we have a really low absentee rate.
I haven’t been posting as much because the rate of voters is a steady trickle. Only 321 voters in 540 minutes. About one voter every 90 seconds or so. Not very busy, but just busy enough.
As assistant chief, I’m handling all the curbside #voters. We have had 3, which is a high for me. 1 or 2 seems normal in my head.
Curbside #voting is another no-excuses voting accommodation in #virginia. Anyone can have a ballot brought to them in their car. We do the whole thing through their car window.
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I haven’t been posting as much because the rate of voters is a steady trickle. Only 321 voters in 540 minutes. About one voter every 90 seconds or so. Not very busy, but just busy enough.
As assistant chief, I’m handling all the curbside #voters. We have had 3, which is a high for me. 1 or 2 seems normal in my head.
Curbside #voting is another no-excuses voting accommodation in #virginia. Anyone can have a ballot brought to them in their car. We do the whole thing through their car window.
It’s been eventful if not super busy. Had to exercise just about every page of the rule book. We had “federal only” voters, HAVA voters (folks who had a simplified registration, but this is the first time we are seeing them vote in person). I’ve had to fix paperwork, I’ve done a bunch of curbsides, and I learned that sometimes a thing we key in one way looks really different in the paperwork.
I ticked the box for “voter signed oath” and our systems showed “challenged voter.” (That’s not what happened. A “challenge” would be like someone pointing at a voter and saying “that person is not a legit voter!”) But the oath gets signed in a couple cases, not just that.
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It’s been eventful if not super busy. Had to exercise just about every page of the rule book. We had “federal only” voters, HAVA voters (folks who had a simplified registration, but this is the first time we are seeing them vote in person). I’ve had to fix paperwork, I’ve done a bunch of curbsides, and I learned that sometimes a thing we key in one way looks really different in the paperwork.
I ticked the box for “voter signed oath” and our systems showed “challenged voter.” (That’s not what happened. A “challenge” would be like someone pointing at a voter and saying “that person is not a legit voter!”) But the oath gets signed in a couple cases, not just that.
We are entering the final hour and the post-work #voting rush has been intense. Now I see why we have so many people. It was super sleepy for a long time and then suddenly we had 10 voters at a time.
We get into this weird little end-of-day dilemma. Do we open another pack of ballots? Let me explain.
There are 200 blank ballots to a pack. If we open them, 2 officers go off to the side and count them. Twice. Not only does it take 2 officers out, it takes about 10 minutes. The worst thing in the world would be to have a rush of voters at the end of the day, and run out of open ballots. They sit waiting while we count, etc. It’s not a great experience for anyone. But it’s been so slow, and then so busy, it’s hard to judge.
We are at about 520 #voters so far, and so we have about 80 left for the final 50 minutes. It’s really hard to judge.
10/ #electionofficer
