Comptroller Scott Stringer (D) asked his constituents on the Cadillackish West Side and Chelsea voting zones to "let him know if people experienced any voting irregularities or problems" in the just passed primaries on Tuesday, 19 April.  He is at the by-no-means comprehensive roster of complaint solicitors in the too solid blue range of the New York voting mountain.  The N.Y. Post, directly following the primary, catalogued a top ten of alleged voting horrors.  The incessant N.Y. Daily News publishes frequent carpy pieces slashing at both policy and personnel at the Board. Some of the crit is warranted, as the case was with a staffer who inadvertently deleted many thousands of voters from the rolls.  Some of the lacerations, however, are unwarranted.

There are some 350 poll sites in the central city, needing to be staffed by many workers, from 5 am to well after 9:30 pm.  Even with huge training sessions, the laws change, policies change – even until the last minute before the elections.  The percentage of errors is small, viewed from the perspective of millions of transactions all day.

So despite the slams by the local or national media, perfection is a goal not easily attained.  Mistakes will happen.  The pay for the poll workers is not alluring, so frequent training of Ph.D.s for the positions is not an option.

The complaints range from bungled voting to shuttered sites to "broken" machines.  But these were not all laid at the feet of the BoE, because voters participate in failing memory, physical inabilities, dispersement and redistricting that has nothing to do with the particular election, and the vagaries of poll site outlets, superintendents/janitors, and a host of aspects of the process beyond BOE control.

As an 8-year Board of Elections worker, first as a table inspector; then as a coordinator; and now, for many years, both a senior trainer and A.D. monitor (Assembly District watchdog), I can speak from the inside to some of the warranted and mostly unwarranted "complaints" leveled unremittingly against the BoE.  There are teams sent out to every poll site, and many are covering the sites two or three times a day.

As an A.D. monitor, it is my task to go around to as many poll sites as can fit in a 5 am-to-9 pm day, paired with either a Democrat or a Republican, so all teams and troubleshooters are bipartisan.  We visit each poll site and assess, with the suggestions and advisories of the site coordinators, whatever problems there might be, from frozen equipment to a shortage of inside or outside signage.

The crush comes heaviest at closing, where all hands are on deck trying to reverse all the work put out from 5:00 am to 6:00, when the polls open with all machines functional and on, all signs hung up inside and outside the site, and all the materials needed on the tables ready to serve the voters.

First, some basics.

New recruits are trained for four hours on the niceties of the process; tested; and, if they pass, assigned a poll job such as table inspector, scanner inspector, accessibility clerk (two hours' training), translator (they must be proficient in their chosen tongue: Mandarin, Korean, Bengali, Russian, or Spanish in NYC; other boroughs also add Punjabi and a few other languages dominant in the outer boroughs).  If the trainees fail, they can take the class again and the test again.  They can reclass and retest.  Attrition and age remove some of the less proficient workers, removed too when coordinators or A.D. monitors recommend removal for failure to perform or gross behavior (sleeping at the post, poor comportment, fighting, rudeness to voters, etc.).

All trainees are told that the payment for taking class is contingent on showing up at the appointed place/poll site on the appointed election day.  If they fail to show up, they forfeit the pay normally given for the four-hour class.

Although there are hundreds of standbys at the Board of Elections on Varick street, because many people choose not to get up at the unholy hour of 3:00 or 4:00 to be at their poll site at 5:00, those who arrive have twice the work.  The standbys are quickly exhausted, as coordinators call in the need for four, five, eight, or more workers to replace the no-shows.  By 9:00 am, there are few standbys left at Varick, and the site workers have to make do.  Many workers consequently do not take the hour they are allotted for lunch and the hour for supper.  They simply have no replacements, so they work all day on a Starbucks container or a doughnut some angel might buy to pass around.

Trainers have more than a week of training, in all the lacunae of the law, the equipment, new and old policies, changes in policy, and even the best ways to teach the material so it can be encompassed inside the four hours minus half an hour for the open-book test.

This election season, though many thousands of would-be workers were trained until the very last minute, the polls in NYC were short a reputed 1,000 workers.  This meant heavier than usual burdens on the workers who showed up.  Frankly, no matter what position one is assigned, one has a grueling day, often one that does not end until close to 10:00 pm – all after working madly all day.

Double primary

This April, the public might have been itchy because they did not realize the rarity of having both a Democrat and a Republican primary.  Usually it is one or the other, not both.  Because both sides are hotly contested, the public was energized to vote.  Often, primaries elicit yawns and disinterest.

Add to this the unbelievably activist voter rolls of many sectors of NYC.  Since so many are activists in one cause or another, they bring impatience and annoyance in with their before-work stepping into their neighborhood polls.

"Provisional ballots"

Lots of people came around and ask for these, though they don't exist.  Mystery "they told us" sentences indicate they have "been told" that they are entitled to provisional ballots.  No.  Primaries are for major party registrants and always have been.  Since many people have registered years ago, they may not have registered for either the Democrat or Republican Party; many may have registered as Independence, Conservative, Workers Party and the like.  Consequently, they are not entitled to primary votes.  Those turned away are usually unhappy and insist they were registered as one or the other party.

There is some debate about possibly changing the rules so that non-major party voters might toss in their vote, but the case is still pretty iffy.  Though these voters insist they "heard" about provisionals, there are just Democrat and Republican ballots and affidavits, which have very strict protocols before they are used.  Still, because we never like to turn away voters, affidavits are often handed out despite the voter not being a fit for why affidavits are supposed to be used.

Long lines

As stated, NYC is viscerally active in its voter lust.  Huge turnout is huger than turnouts in other less developed towns or cities.  So long lines, in the presence of understaffing – no fault of the Board of Elections – are the price of activism and huge voter rolls.  Be it noted that the queues seen at the primary will pale at the presidential election day lines.  Be forewarned.

"Purging the lists"

Registration lists periodically purge the names for those they know to be deceased, moved, in jail, or otherwise not reasonable to be in current lists.  If a person moves, he must inform the BoE, or he will not be in the current book or may be in the book of his former address.  It takes months to cycle into a new address and months to change one's party affiliation.  Thus, voters who made the deadline of 15 October were listed in the registration lists, but if they applied for new address or new party affiliation, they were not represented.  As impatient as New Yorkers are, it's hard for many to get their heads around not being in the updated listings, but the massive work involved does not lend itself to instant changes.

Sector difficulties

Some reported kerfuffles were apparently in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn.  These anecdotal set-tos and confusions were not seen in Manhattan, where most coordinators are pros and handle their poll sites, some with as many as 16 separate election districts, in apple-pie order.

Disenfranchisement

A complaint some lob time and again at the BoE.  But if one has moved, is not a primary party registrant, or is not registered at all, there is no vote available.  Still, one can always fill in an affidavit and hope the reviewers of each affidavit will agree with the reason for the affidavit.

No one is being disenfranchised.  The board bends over backwards to be inclusive and works hard to correct any problems from the prior election cycles.  Billions are spent on redundant forms in the four languages, on manuals, on signage, on supplies, on updating the materials and equipment for the physically and cognitively challenged.

So there are reasons and contextual explanations for the complaints, whining, and annoyances of some of the millions of Gotham's hyperactive voting populace.

And in case you had not known – New York is one of the toughest states, with the lowest rates of voter tampering and corruption, and the highest degree of conscientiousness.

Bottom line: The people working for the Board of Elections are trying their best and responding to many millions of people within a very brief time frame.  The public might consider extending them a little sympathy for the pressures of time, their finite resources, and the impatience of the average New Yorker.

Dawn Vickye is the pen name of a New York poll worker