20% Turnout

I had a brand new experience on Tuesday, Aug. 5th, I was a precinct judge for the Missouri election. I arrived at the polling location at 5AM and finished at 8PM when I helped deliver our ballots and official materials to a central location. Here are some of my observations of this new experience:

1. I was surprised how political the process is. There had to be an even number of Republican and Democrat workers at the polling location. Every person who voted had to fill out a voter ticket and a Republican and Democrat worker has to initial every voter ticket. Then the voter signed into a log, and again, a worker from both parties had to initial the signature. When we began the closing up process, all the logs and record keeping documents had to be signed off by workers from both parties. Then, to complete the process, a Republican and a Democrat had to go together in the same car to deliver the locked and sealed ballots to the central collection location. This bit of bureaucracy slowed the voting process down considerably, and we didn't have that many voters.

2. I was surprised that only 20% of the registered voters in this precinct actually voted. And, not everyone who is eligible to register and vote is even registered. It is disappointing that such a small group of people elect our leaders. I guess the moral of the story is, "if you don't vote, don't complain about the leaders performance". We had a supplemental list of registered voters. These are people that registered to vote at the last minute, and their names were not in the pre-printed logs. In our precinct, no one on that last minute list voted. Why bother to register?

3. This was really an enjoyable process. It was great to greet so many people I didn't know and assist them to participate in our democratic process. I think I want to work for the general election in November. It will probably be a "zoo" because the turnout rate will be very high. Even though this precinct only has approximately 1,000 registered voters, the results from this precinct really matter, and I had a small part in that.