Mountain Musings: A Homesteader’s Longtime Love of Election Day

Mountain Musings – A guest column by Dottie Simmons who lives in eastern Humboldt County describes life at her rural homestead:

It may be an odd thing for a Back-to-the-Land homesteader to be attached to elections, but it has been one of my things for decades.

When we first moved here there was a Dinsmore polling place where we first met some of our community. Being close to the Trinity County line and involved in volunteer work that crossed that boundary, our interest in county supervisors included both counties and we met more of the community, as well as several candidates, going to various ‘meet the candidate’ events.

But ultimately my involvement bloomed when our local poll had closed and the closest was now in Bridgeville and they were looking for more volunteers to work it. I signed up and have always been glad I did. Not only is it the only place you are completely free of political blather on election day (it’s the law!), it was a wonderful gathering place of the community (replete with gifts of home-made treats from voters!), and it teaches you the incredible thought and care and dedication goes into preserving this most basic tenet of our representative democracy – our individual right to vote.

I have been a simple clerk as well as the poll manager. I have worked primary, mid-term and presidential elections. It required at least 2 training days, depending on your position. One to learn how to manage the equipment. As a poll manager your responsibility included caring for some of that equipment getting to the poll as well as set up. The election itself was two days. One afternoon into night getting the basics in place, then election day, which starts before dawn to get set up before the poll opens at 7:00 A.M., including signs and machines and outdoor signage and electronic equipment and ballots… Each step involving the witnessing, logging, and signing of the removal and replacement of secure tags on every machine and container, after taking an oath to uphold our county, state, and national laws and Constitutions. We took this oath seriously as every government employee at all levels does… or at least should.

At seven you open to the voters and greet and check them against the voter rolls, give them the ballot and directions if needed. With a bit of visiting and so on. At eight the polls close and once everyone who was present at that time has cast their ballot the real work begins. Every ballot, provisional, voted, and blank is counted and the numbers checked to make sure it matches what you had to start with. Everything is logged and signed by all the poll workers and secured on packets that are secured in satchels. Machines have logs printed and checked against the hard copy tallies, signed again. Closed, secured, and ready to be picked up by a Sheriff’s deputy that was sent out to all these remote polling places. If you are lucky you are done when they arrive and they arrive by around 9:30 P.M.

The small, local rural polling places have, sadly, mostly disappeared. It was inevitable. Just like VFDs and other organizations, volunteers are harder than ever to find. On top of that, in a large rural, mountainous, area like ours getting the equipment and ballots safely to and from the polling places and ensuring all the details (weather caused power outages, road issues, etc.) can be covered expediently.  So, ultimately, even our little (minuscule, actually) Bridgeville poll closed and was replaced by centralized Voting Centers, Ballot drop boxes, and voting by mail.

I have worked the Voting Center in Fortuna. It was open 10 days to give time for those who live out of town but wish to vote in person to get there. More training, as instead of only having ballots for your district (and having to send voters from other districts to a different polling place or do a provisional ballot for them) we could print individual ballots on the spot that covered each districts school board and/or supervisor’s race.

I must say, despite missing our little local polling place with home-baked goodies and neighborly visits, the Voting Centers, with more people working and printing individual ballots, are an improvement.

Having been unable to work for a couple elections, I hope to be up and able to serve again next March for the Primary election. See you there!

 

Meanwhile, be sure to exercise your right to VOTE!