23:23 - 16.12.05
mobility
Left work as soon as I got in this morning. Off to look at the one high school we hope to use as a polling site. Brand new facility in the NW corner of our electoral district. Frost paintings everywhere. That silvery white Christmas card look in the sky and blanketing the land. Magical. The principal met us and spent a lot of time showing us around. Very proud of the students, staff and the building I think. Rightfully so. I think he might be a fellow Aquarian. Long black hair and beard. Sandals, no socks. It's snowing outside. My kind of person.
Back at the office several calls from the printer throughout the day. Questions, requests for approvals and updates. Around 4 in the pm our first shipment of voter information cards - 85,000. My staff were all over them excited that we were going to have a reasonable amount of time to get the work done this go round. Well maybe.
Still problems with the mobile polls with respect to the software that is provided. My assistant tech and I had tinkered around enough with the two programs that inter-relate to produce the documents that we must provide to voters and the candidates that we were able to produce them the correct way. Several discussions on the phone with the one specialist in Ottawa who actually works with that software and usually understands it.
At 6 pm I checked the trouble ticket queue to see if what I had requested had been done so we could move forward with the next steps of actually labelling the mail out cards for the electors. After checking about three of those I decided I needed to speak to the powers that be about the inaccuracies in those tickets. The subjects and the requests I had made we lost in a flurry of exchanges between staff there almost as though they were speculating on what I really wanted without having any knowledge of how the electoral process works.
The young woman that took my call had very little knowledge of anything. All she seemed to be able to do was parrot back the bits of speculative discussion that had occurred between and among her peers. She tried flattery to calm me down first (but very few Returning Officers have the skills you have on a computer). That didn't fly at all - I know a fair number of ROs who are very competent. Then she tried insisting that I had gotten and been pleased with the answers received because it said so in those tickets. Yes but I had not written those tickets - her co-workers who were as untrained as she was had written them. They don't reflect any of the issues I wanted dealt with. I honestly don't think that a lot of those responders had enough knowledge to even understand the question I raised. Waste of time.
Spent some time talking with one of the other Returning Officers in Calgary mid afternoon and that might have fuelled the frustration a bit I guess. He had a list of similar problems he was trying to iron out. We both had done the prewrit exercises in the spring and fall and were assured that our work had been recognized and incorporated. Sure thing. Rmemeber my comments about deceased people that I have removed more than once from the list? Well the wife of the one whose name I removed in 2000 popped in just after that conversation. Guess what she had just received in the mail. A personalized letter from Elections Canada - addressed to her husband. He died in mid 1999 and she watched me as I removed him personally for her. His name reappeared in the 2004 election and then again this fall in the pre-writ exercise. Each time I remove him he comes back. I told her I think he is trying to haunt me. She laughed. I told her I apologized and that I would also ask if a letter of apology could be sent to her from the person who sent that last bit of mail. Insensitive.
The balance of the day was spent helping staff work out their task, ensuring each person received the communications sent their way from Ottawa and trying to get every one to pull together. Everyone seems to be in a good frame of mind and are all quite playful. I received a call from the one staff member who collapsed on her way to the funeral. Major inection in the spine that had damaged her nerves. She has been on intravenous antibiotics for a week. She will be returned to oral drugs tomorrow which is a very good sign. It will still be quite some time before she will be able to be discharged though.
Anyway time to go get tomorrow's laundry done. Good night dear diary.
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