11:37 p.m. - 2004-07-04
to Sunday
Whew! Finally. I'm sorry I haven't posted for a few days dear diary, but I haven't been able to get to this screen anytime I've tried. Guess the paying members have had a lot more to say, so there hasn't been any space for the rest of us - fair game.
I just want to write down as much as I can about the last week of the election before I forget. The Advance polls had gone smoother on Saturday because of the talk I had had with each team before they began. Some of the problem had been created when my assistant and two of the managers decided to change some of the procedures without checking the manual or consulting me. I don't have a lot of say with respect to how certain processes are carried out - that's dictated by the legislation. When staff take matters into their own hands it means a lot of clean up for me and a lot of confusion for the staff who have been trained to do their work according to the law. It is difficult to impress on some of my staff that there is no room for improvisation there but I keep trying. Making it "easier" or "faster" isn't an option.
On Father's Day I told all the Dads in our office to stay home. Our normal hours of operation on Sunday are to be between noon and four so the demand shouldn't be so high. Problem for me was the hospital vote that started at 9 am plus all the training that had been scheduled. I was in until 5 or 6 pm as a result but the time was productive.
The only wasted time was dealing with the local rep's demands again. I understand the value of stats - no one better - but not when I 'm already drowning in critical paperwork. She requested a count of the names of potential workers from their parties received from eligible political parties and candidates. I received a total of 17 names from the Conservative party and their candidate for the positions they were entitled to fill. I received 0 names from the Liberal party or candidate. I e-mailed the above groups prior to the writ being dropped, so they would have time to collect their names and then followed up twice during the writ period at appropriate times. I was told verbally by all who were eligible, that because their volunteers were required to cease all political activity once their oath of office was taken with us, they would not relinquish their names because they needed those people for their campaigns. Of the 17 people contactd about half stated that they did not know that their names had been forwarded and were concerned that their personal information had been given to us without their knowledge.
Next question was Re: ballots - why hadn't we given them out to polling day staff and the command that "under no circumstances were we to wait until the weekend". We wouldn`t be receiving ours from the printer until Thursday at the earliest in the coming week. We then have to count and divvy them up and produce the appropriate paperwork for each DRO. We also wouldn`t have our lists back from the printer until Friday at the earliest, since we can`t reproduce it until Wednesday, after all registration has been entered. We then call our DRO`s to come in as soon as everything has been prepared by the team I have set up to expedite that process, but we had been training polling day staff for nearly a week and the directions being given by her made no sense, given that we don`t have our materials until the weekend prior to polling day. I suggested that whoever made up that schedule should consult the Aide Memoire before making such useless instructions. In addition, having DROs pick up their balloting material a couple of days before the election means we have one final opportunity to connect with them, reinforce instructions and troubleshoot issues as they arise.
Monday was very busy with the final day of Advance polls and more training, plus the hospital voting, but there was a rhythym developed over the weekend that kept everything on track. The Dads who came in all thanked me for their day off except my assistant who complained he was too tired to work, because he had been busy all Fathers Day. Tuesday was the wind down for targetted and in-office registration as well as for special ballot and hospital voting. I spent most of it swearing in newly trained polling day workers and issuing special ballots. The local rep for Ottawa showed up for the last training session of the day to boot. Tired after all that.
Wednesday was my day for my downtown job. My co-worker went through the changes in the physical set up of the file room and the rationale he and our liaison A, had used to come to that process since the Thursday the previous week when I had been there. He explained how future numbering would be assigned to support the new filing protocols. He then took me to the locked cabinet near the supervisor's office that had been opened to determine what material was contained within. It was confidential and protected proprietary information not pertinent to this project. It had been locked there intentionally and should not have been opened for anyone to see.
D then gave me the documents that he didn't feel comfortable assessing and asked me to analyze and sort it for him. It contained some really fascinating local and international data. Once I went through what I had found with him, D expressed the concern that the material was outside of the scope of the project. He wanted to touch base with our supervisor with respect to working with it. Fine by me although I was itching to work with it just for what I could learn from it. Because of the change of the layout and protocols for handling the data we are working on from the week before I had to go back and redo some of the work from then. Fair enough.
D left at 3 pm. I waited for K to arrive so that I could talk with her about the material that appeared to have scanning errors. I had brought in a diskette with the spreadsheet I'd sent that recorded all the anomalies I had found and passed it on to her with our liaison's permission. D had left a print out of additional material for her and A returned the original CDs that K's team had created so that she could take them away to assess. Got into the office and as stated in a previous post found all heck had broken loose again. We are allowed to hire an assistant, so that we can take a break once in a while during the whole event, but each time I did so it seemed that everything either backed up until I could get to it or disasters were piled up waiting. At one point the Assistant Automation Co-ordinator called me with some questions about procedures - could he go forward with production of the official list of electors. Yes of course we only have a two day turn around to get everything done and printed. Well my assistant had told him he couldn't do anything until I came back to the office. I had already authorized production and expressed surprise over the interference in that. Well "he won't make a decision about anything and won't let anyone else either". Oi.
Thursday I wrote the balance of the Contigency Plan demanded by the local rep and Ottawa. Since I always have plans a, b and c it wasn't difficult just very time consuming when I could have been working with my own staff to get final details for polling day under control instead.
One of the things I had planned and implemented earlier on was an Uber Deputy Returning Officer and Uber Central Poll Supervisor who each would be in regular contact with the staff hired to fill those positions. Their responsibility was to take questions, check for problems and liaise between me and the larger groups so that better communication was possible. Taking calls from 500 polling day staff in addition to all the other work I had to do just wasn't feasible. I found that that one innovation helped a lot in a number of ways.
The big problem on Thursday was a discovery made in the afternoon, when a voter called to find out where to vote. He was told his name had been crossed off the list and transferred to another electoral district. He stated that he hadn't mioved in about 20 years and that he had not voted yet. Closer examination of the list being produced determined there were about 2000 similar cases with people being transferred, sometimes only one in a family grouping, to other electoral districts in Calgary and to other provinces. I talked with two other Returning Officers to see if they were finding the same thing. One said yes and that some of her residents were even being told that their polling stations were in the Yukon - north of the 60th parallel that is by Ottawa. Great. Called Ottawa. Well they had talked with the local phone company and used their records in place of our registration records that had just been completed. The tone from Craig on the conference call - he included two of their IT people - he made to me after "investigating" my concerns was to constantly apologize to the two techs for boring them, "while he explained the simple things to the Returning Officer" so I could understand that it wasn't their fault. Uh huh.
On Thursday night I asked my youngest to pick up an ice cream cake for number two son who was celebrating his 26th birthday, by coming to work in special ballots after a full day at his regular job. My intent was just to be certain he got his treat quietly and privately. My assistant found out about it - he picked up my youngest after he bought it - and was quite annoyed that the cake wasn't broken out and shared with everyone. I pointed out that a number of people in the office had had birthdays since the beginning of the election and that I didn't think it was fair to only publicly celebrate my son's because of our relationship. That said, I didn't see anything wrong with providing him with a cake to share with his partner when he went home after a very long work day. My son and I hadn't eaten supper yet - me not at all that day - so I said we were just stepping out to pick up some fast food and would be back immediately after the conversation about birthdays. When I walked back into the office half an hour later I was told my assistant had dismissed a whole class of trainees without their oaths being sworn, stating he couldn't find the oaths that were sitting signed and ready in the middle of my desk. Uh huh. He realized he had really overstepped the bounds then, but just complained about being mistreated by my high expecatations. Given his salary that's part of the process. Arggh.
Friday included a visit from one of the other Returning Officers asking for time to go through the problems with our lists - I showed him all our screen shots and other tracking of evidence - and talking about problems he was having with personnel as well. That seemed to be a theme for all the Returning Officers this time. He had a really bright young woman with him who - he said - was the de facto assistant for his office. He had brought her along so she could ask all the questions she needed to about the last phase building up to polling day to carry out the role she had taken on. The RO said he had made a big mistake in hiring a family friend as his assistant and had had to mitigate the damage she had caused by reducing the difficulty of the tasks he had asked her to take on and to also surround her with people who could catch and fix her errors. It was almost as though he knew what was happening in my office too. At the time the other RO was in my office I was asking my assistant to do the running around town and giving the critical tasks to the people I could trust to do them the way they were laid out in the time allotted. Friday being two days before election eve - right?
Ballots were being sorted,accounted for and documented, ballot boxes being prepared,filled, sealed and documented with the paperwork - ballots and elector lists along with the paperwork I had to produce -that are long and tedious but critical for legal reasons and for tracking actions after the vote - for the Deputy Returning Officers. Said DROs being called to come pick up their material. That flowed into Saturday before it was completed and we still had to complete all the material preparations for the Central Poll Supervisors as well.
On Saturday the assistant was absent for most of the day on lunches with different staff members - turned out it was his birthday. One of his buddies then tried to demand that I stop all the work we were trying to complete so we could have a party for him in the afternoon. I said again that it wasn't appropriate to single out one person when so many people had had birthdays in the office for a party and that he was welcome to do something himself as long as it was discreet and outside the office. The buddy decided to ignore what I had said and ended up setting up a party in the warehouse part of the building late afternoon, demanding that I stop and attend as my duty. I pointed out that I was doing my job and that I didn't have any time for social functions. The distractions meant a lot of other staff weren't focusing on their work and other staff were being left out. I finally went home to work with about a half hour left in the day because I couldn't function in the office anymore and my temper was getting too thin to risk an encounter with the group disrupting the end of the day work.
Cowardly but I thought no contact at that point was safest. Turned out I was wrong but I'll leave that story for tomorrow.
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