Let me start by saying that this probably won't be of too much interest to most people. I just wanted a place to collect my thoughts on my experience yesterday. To those of you still reading, first, a little bit about me: I'm the chairman of the Halfmoon, NY Democrats. We're a traditionally very Republican town in the northern suburbs of Albany, NY. I got involved with the local Dems a few years ago, and we're still trying to fill up the committee. Due to the lack of a strong Dem presence here, we were short on Election Inspectors, so I offered to help out. I took the day off, and ended up working as the only Dem inspector in my district, at a polling place with 4 districts.
First, the counts:
16 of 47 Dems in the district voted (34%)
35 of 125 Repubs in the district voted (28%)
Overall turnout: 30%
Dem breakdown was 11-5 Clinton
Repub breakdown was as follows:
McCain 19
Romney 10
Huckabee 4
Paul 2
Both about what I expected. After Rudy dropped out, the NY repubs quickly threw their support behind McCain.
I was very surprised at how inept some poll workers were. Even those that had worked the polls for many years. I found at our location, there were a few that knew how everything worked, and how to set up and break down the machines, but in general, nobody had any idea what was going on. I had agreed to help only a week or so before the Primary, and had received no training. The two older ladies I was working with had previously worked many polls between them, but had no idea how to set up the machine. We had to get help from an inspector in a different district both on setting the machine up to open the polls, and to get the vote counts at the end of the night.
You'd think it wouldn't be too hard to figure out which district people should vote in, right? Wrong. In our packets, we had a map of the town with election districts shown (but without labels on most roads), and a "cheat sheet" of addresses located in each district. Most of our districts were adjacent to one another (and to those voting in the Town Hall, across the parking lot), so there was going to be some confusion where a street acted as the ED boundary. But most streets are entirely within one ED. My district was seated closest to the door, so most of the people that came in not knowing which district to vote in got to talk to us. After a while, I started remembering which roads were in with ED, but my co-inspectors didn't seem to pick it up, having to look up each and every address on the cheat sheet. Maybe my memory is better. Maybe it's because I'm a map nut, so I enjoy staring at ED maps for fun. Maybe it's because I'm actively involved in the local Dems, and I've canvassed some of the areas we were dealing with... but it sure seemed like the other inspectors could have been more on the ball (needless to say, they loved me and insisted I come back in the future).
All in all an interesting experience, and I'd consider helping out again if I'm needed and if my schedule allows. Parts were quite fun, parts were quite boring, but overall I'm glad I did it.