Polls were supposed to be open from 7am to 7pm Tues. I had gone to my 4 hour training on Fri, picked up all my supplies on Sun, met the pastor from the church in which voting would occur and got the key to the building on Mon, met my alternate judge and set up the room - as much as we could. Getting all the electronics ready would be done on Tues at 6am, so as not to compromise the integrity of the machines and votes. On Mon evening around 8 I got an email notice saying that we were supposed to have an ice storm over the night so keep an eye on the weather. I thought they just meant so if the roads are icy you will need to keep travel time in mind.
Rick and I went to bed at 9pm, I needed to get up at 4:30am to be ready to leave by 5:30 and get to our polling place by 6am. Tues morning the roads were not icy but there was ice on the trees and we arrived a few min before 6. We began setting up all the papers and outside signs. No one arrives to help. I have emergency numbers to call and get help, but we wait, and finally at 6:45 I call the Democrat election judge - guess what? Because of the "bad" ice storm polling had been delayed until 11. It was on the news, but I didn't check the news. No, in the email saying there was a "winter advisory," actually meant they might delay voting. Handy info for them to have SAID in the email, that there was a possibility of delaying the election so before you get up at 4:30am and get ready, check the news. Bunch of yellow belly city slickers. I can remember walking in snow a foot deep, 4 inches of ice underneath, no boots, socks on my hands for gloves, winter coat that either the zipper was broken, or had lost all the buttons, and that was uphill both ways, just to get to school. Anyways....
Rick went to work for a few hours, I gathered up all electronics and went home.
Back to our polling place by 10 to set up, this time everyone was there to help. Well, kinda. The democrat judge comes flying in 30 min late and her alternate judge (her sister) was 50 min late. She immediately thought she was in charge, even tho my alternate had been an election judge for 15 years himself before taking a break of 5 years. She was a nice lady tho.
We processed exactly 149 votes, so it was slow most of the time. We did have a fairly steady stream but no big rushes - I'm not complaining.
At 6pm one of the trouble shooting vans came around and told us we needed to hold polls open until 9, and all votes after 7pm must be process as provisional votes, making a lot of paperwork the voter needed to fill out, protocol to be followed, which added a lot of extra paperwork for us.
All the procedures, protocol, etc. was overkill, in my opinion, but any voter in Travis County can be assured that no cheating would be done. At least it would be very hard - nice to know because I do know cheating occurs every election around the nation. No people or parties mentioned (!).
We began closing the vote at 9pm, actually 8:45, and finished it all up at 9:30. Then the other judge and I had to drive the supplies and electronics over to the RSS in separate vehicles following each other (I love all the acronyms everyone loves to use - not) the Receiving Substation and officially returned everything. This took another 30 min but was so organized it didn't take long. Rick had already returned home and I got back at 11pm.
Will I volunteer to be another judge? Probably. It was fun but a headache during opening polls and closing polls. It's amazing what goes on behind the scenes, in anything, to get an event ready for the clients, consumers, customers, etc. But next time I won't be a novice so it will definitely be easier.
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