What could go wrong at a polling place?

And then the little lady in the booth who hasn't said a word for half an hour comes out and instead of connecting the two arrows with a black line the way you're supposed to, she's made check marks by all the choices. They're not going to get read. She's got to do it all over. We've got to pull three new ballots for her and spoil the others. But she wants to use her spoiled ballots as a guide for marking the new one, so we can't spoil them, we have to give them to her and then wait.

Quick: How many spoiled, or to-be spoiled, ballots am I holding in my hand? How many people are in the voting booths? Are we following all the rules? Is it legal for the man's daughter to accompany him into the booth? Are we earning our money? Are we serving democracy?

And then the guy who's not on the roster has to vote provisionally. So you get out the provisional envelope and have him fill it out. And have him sign the provisional roster. But: Oh, here he is, in the green section! He just hasn't voted for a while! So, oh, let's put the provisional ballot away. But can we just throw it away? And then somebody comes in with an absentee ballot but they don't want to vote absentee because they want their vote to count right away. They want to feed their vote right into the machine. But the only way an absentee voter can vote in the precinct is to do it provisionally. And that wouldn't be any faster. So forget it, vote absentee.

Then a man shows up with absentee ballots for himself and his wife. But his wife hasn't signed the part where she gives him the authority to deliver it for him. She signed the part where she is supposed to sign it for herself if she drops it off. But not the part for her husband to drop it off. And he's saying, "Look, she signed it here." But that's not the right place. So he has to go back to his wife and have her sign in the other place. But she's at work. So why should he have to come all the way back? He doesn't. He can drop it off anywhere, at any voting place in the city. Really? Yes, really.

Meanwhile, this guy who's voted wants to put his things through the machine, so you take them from him and turn to put them through the machine and one of them gets spit out. But you turn and he's already in his truck driving off. So you push the override button but the machine won't take the ballot. So here's a ballot that has been voted and deserves to be counted but the machine won't take it. It's not a provisional ballot. He was on the roster. It's not voted twice. It's just weirdly hinky in the way things in the electronic world are sometimes just weirdly hinky. So let's put it in the provisional box and make a note to have it counted manually.

This goes on from 6:30 a.m. till 8 p.m. Then you close the doors and stare at all this mess and try to remember what you did and why, and count it up and make some sense of it. At the end of the day you have this bunch of ballots and you have to count them up and make everything match up and it never does. You're always off a little. And the elections supervisor comes along and she doesn't know, either. It's all new. We're all figuring it out. There's no script. You have to pay attention and do your best.

If you are outraged at how elections are held in America, if you're incredulous at the stupidity and the ineptness of the election process, if you can't believe how incompetent these people could be, do us a favor: Volunteer. Take a paid day off from work and do your part to improve democracy. America needs you.

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