1:47 a.m. - 2004-06-04
Single Steps
We were so busy today that we didn't have our morning meeting. Two of the supervisors had booked time in their childrens' schools before the election was called. End of year things for the kids are too important to miss at the whim of politicians. The busy-ness derived from the fact that the rest of us needed to cover off for them. I looked over some registration issues. A lot of questions about the process and technical details of securing voter information. Questions about why we hadn't hired all the staff we needed before the election. First reason is that we don't know when exactly and the second point is that there is no budget to carry out such a huge task nor is there the time.
Then I received a call from yet another principal who had difficulty with us being in their school gym. Could we come and check out some alternate space. Made an appointment for 1 pm. Met with him,one of my new people along for observation, and looked over the space. It was very tight but the principal committed to moving the whole poll into the gym after students had finished writing their exams around the noon hour. Since most electors show up at the polls after 3 pm it was doable. Nice gentleman - the principal. At least he was doing the best he could for us.
In the morning I sent my Assistant to deal with errands and to calm down a situation where some of our staff had overstepped their bounds - putting up signage where a landlord didn't like it. There is legislation that causes fines and imprisonment for tampering with our election signs, but there is no point in creating ill will with people one should really be working with. He also had more material that we had received for the printer that he wanted to deliver. I think that was because we had run out of brochures for the door to door registration and he wanted to negotiate some printing face to face. He walked back in the door just half an hour before I had to leave for the school meeting.
At noon two thirds of our voter information cards arrived. Yeah! My printer had called me at work the day before to explain that we wouldn't have them until today at the earliest. Our deadline to get them into the post office for distribution is Friday - over 90,000 pieces to label by hand. All the people I had asked that my staff call when I touched base with them after talking with my printer yesterday were called to come in to get the job done. That was all finished by 8:30 pm with about 30 people working on the production line. Lots of young adults who were very pleased to earn some extra pocket money for summer.
We finished verifying the signatures for the candidate who had submitted his nomination papers last night at about noon. A flurry of calls back and forth for clarification and arrangements for next steps. The first candidate dropped in to pick up the materials he was entitled to at about the same time. The two candidates I hadn't heard from called just shortly after that to make appointments to come and register themselves to run. One candidate showed up at 8 pm tonight to register his material as well. Things are moving along.
I spent most of the afternoon working between the above duties. In addition, I worked in the database auditing and confirming all the registrations or chages made to the preliminary list of electors so far. About 1000 transactions. My other task was locating forms and ensuring everyone else was on track in their tasks.
Long day but productive. Time for bed though - good night.
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