Saturday Oct 31: Beginning of the End

Saturday, October 31 was the final day of early voting, Halloween, and a full moon. I drove to work prepared for another day of operations without electrical power. When I noticed several lights on inside the building, my heart filled with joy and relief. Adam met me at the voting room, as excited as me to see the lights were on. While I powered on laptops and voting machines, Adam reset printers and cleared their queues. Then he gathered  battery backups, extra extension cords, generators, flash lights and lanterns to return to the BOE office down town.
 
As Lois and the other women arrived, we greeted each other warmly, giddy to have electricity again and to finally have made it to the end of our 17 day assignment. Even Mia seemed to be in a good mood. Fanetta brought fresh Krispy Kreme donuts to celebrate our last day working together.
 
At 8am sharp Priscilla cheerfully opened the front door and called out “the polls are now open!” No one was waiting but I clapped and cheered anyway. Jennifer was a no show (again) so I texted her a reminder. She overslept and arrived mid morning to join Brenda, Fanetta, Lois and me as registration assistants. Beverly wasn’t feeling well and called out sick so I asked Tammie to oversee the DS200 ballot scanner tabulator. Then I asked Mia and Tina to work curbside together, giving each other breaks as needed. We had been told to expect the last day to be busy but the first hour was dreadfully quiet. Around 9am voters slowly began to arrive. Voting activity was steady throughout the day, sometimes busy, though wait times did not exceed 15 minutes.
 
One man who had recently moved but didn’t have any ID with his new address was upset because his ballot was placed in a provisional envelope instead of scanned like the others. A woman from Guilford County was told she needed to vote there instead of Forsyth County and she understood, no problem. A man from Buncombe County took the news well too.
 
An observer who had gotten on Lois’ bad side during the first week of early voting offered amends by bringing Halloween candy. He gave individually wrapped mini chocolate bars directly to Lois, saying it was for the children who came with their parents to vote. 

Around 10am I placed an online order with Jersey Mike’s for lunch sandwiches, ordering extra to share with observers and the administrator on duty in the office. 
 
When one of our ballot printers ran out of toner, we adjusted seamlessly by pulling pre-printed paper ballots from our filing cabinets as Lois called the BOE IT team for assistance. No more toner cartridges were available, the last one had gone to Clemmons, so IT tech Clint improvised by connecting Jennifer’s laptop to our other ballot printer using the last available port on that machine. Then we moved Fanetta to my laptop (also connected to the functioning printer) while I floated around the room to relieve each worker for breaks. It was wonderful having enough workers available to fill all the positions so we could help each other and make adjustments as needed with minimal disruptions. If more workers had been available every day, the entire 17 day assignment could have been like this.
 
Around 1:30pm Tina was noticeably tired so I suggested she and Mia take a long break while I covered curbside for them. I didn’t specify how long. 30 minutes later I was still working curbside but didn’t mind because the weather was lovely and I was able to sit and relax a bit while voters marked their ballots inside their vehicles. After a full hour I stepped into the breakroom where Mia and Tina were engrossed in deep conversation. I took a deep breath to calm myself, apologized for interrupting them and asked them to please resume working. Bless their hearts.
 
At 3pm Priscilla stepped outside to announce “the polls are now closed!” As Lois and the other ladies continued assisting voters already in line, I walked downstairs to let Mia and Tina know that no new voters arriving late would be accommodated. Mia scowled at me disapprovingly. A family entered the parking lot at 3:03pm and attempted to walk upstairs to vote in person but I explained that the polls had closed at 3pm sharp and advised them to vote Tuesday. They were disappointed but not upset. An electioneer urged me to reconsider but I didn’t budge because I didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize legally and properly cast votes.

 
Back upstairs I reviewed our last day checklist and began dividing tasks among the team: gathering left over supplies, packing up equipment, taking down signs, etc. The observers lingered until the ballots had been secured. Then one by one each worker said their goodbyes. When Howard stopped by to collect our keys and important papers, Lois and I rushed to finish up. Only when we were ready to leave at 5pm did we realize we had forgotten to lock up the filing cabinets. I texted Michelle to let her know and she replied no problem. Rudi was waiting for Lois in the parking lot, as he did every evening. I wanted to hug Lois goodbye but didn’t. Our farewell was awkward and bittersweet, at least for me.