Interview With A Disgruntled Election Coordinator

John Del Signore/Gothamist

After Monday's public hearing about the Primary Day voting shitshow, we interviewed an election coordinator from Hell's Kitchen who's worked elections for the past three years. (The election coordinator is responsible for managing the polling place and poll workers.) He agreed to speak with us on condition of anonymity because, as he tells us, he hasn't gotten paid yet. By the way, did you know poll workers make some pretty sweet coin? $225 a day! Sure, they have to show up at the crack of dawn, but as our source tells us, the lucky ones spend hours lounging around the equivalent of a DOE rubber room.

Officials have slammed Board of Elections director George Gonzalez for the confusion, malfunctions and disorder that defined the debut of the city's new optical scanning voting machines. For damage control, Gonzalez has ordered the board's P.R. firm (with which it has a $6.7 million contract ) to do an opinion poll about the well-documented Primary Day debacle. (Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg dismissed the $90,000 opinion poll as "great theater.") Our source's account of that day offers a detailed look at how your participatory democracy sausage gets sloppily made.

So how did you get to be an election coordinator? I just showed up. I was not trained because they literally did not have enough people to do that. Myself and another person became coordinators with no training whatsoever on how to operate the machines. We were left to make it up as we go along! I showed up at the Board of Elections standby center at 450 West 33rd Street at 5 a.m. It's like the DOE rubber room. There were maybe 300 people there, and you wait around for assignments. I was expecting to be a regular poll worker, but they said, "You can be an election coordinator." I asked, "How?" They said, "You'll just know, you'll figure it out." They pay $325.

Where did they send you? I was sent to a senior center in the Clinton neighborhood in Manhattan, where we had about 120 voters come in throughout the day. We didn't get there until 7 a.m. and nothing was set up. The machines were not operational. The guy at the door was there on time, but not because the Board of Elections notified him; he found out when to report through the senior center. We went in not knowing the procedures and that day we never had a ballot marking device that works.

What's that? It's designed for disabled voters. It has Braille, and it lets people who can't stand up and push the paper ballot into the scanner cast their vote. I heard that many other districts were unable to operate the ballot marking devices simply because no one knew where the keys were!

There was a lot of confusion. We did the best we could; we were on the phone with the Board of Elections 15 or 20 times that day, going over manuals and procedures, but I'm not convinced we followed all procedures to the letter. There were complaints that voters had no privacy but it's a mixed bag; a lot of them couldn't read the thing and needed help marking the ballot and scanning it. The scanners themselves worked fine, at least for us. The machinery is not complicated. The best improvement they can make would be to raise the font and do something to more closely replicate a private booth. But when they have a full ballot in November with a lot more people, with three or four times the volume, I don't think the Board of Elections will be able to handle it.

What do you know about George Gonzales, who runs the Board of Elections? My understanding is that the Board of Elections went through several candidates who were local community board people, and he was sort of the compromise candidate. I'm told he had no demonstrable background for this kind of work, but I don't know. I think he has no ability to understand what's involved in this effort, and to be fair he came very late to the game. I don't think he knows what he's doing. They trained the workers decently enough, but there are a lot of people who've been doing this for years and can't be bothered to do anything differently.

At that hearing last week, Gonzalez said a lot of poll workers didn't show up. I don't buy that at all. There were literally 500 people in the room at West 33rd Street waiting for assignments. If they were organized, people would have had assignments and reported for them on time. Instead there's a cattle call at West 33rd Street, and there are cars waiting to drive them to places that need help, and they get there late.

Do you think you'll go back for the general election in November? I don't know. It's exhausting! I've had very pleasant experiences working in my home district over the past couple years. If i can get an assignment closer to home I'll do it. But they need to double their efforts when it comes to the newer breed of people who are coming in. Some of the ladies who have been around forever still work really hard but there's a new generation that just wants to sit on their butts and get a paycheck, which is $225 for a poll worker.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on October 6, 2010 1:30 PM

Comments [rss]

theseer

Actually, there is Training to become a Poll worker, a Coordinator and a Poll Worker Trainer, so I don't understand the comments made by our anonymous Election Coordinator. The Training is a Five hour course for which you must pass an examination, open book, but still you must have a basic and general understanding of the Election Process. The new system of scanning a ballot required a six hour Training day. If you passed the Training and Work and Election event, you will receive a $100.00 bonus for the training and $200.00 for working an Election event. This so called anonymous individual has misinformed the Public. The election process is as difficult and tedious as the Trained Coordinators who fail to either study the Manuals, lack experience or just want a check, not realizing their lack of information and lack of ability to manage a diverse group of people can create a chaotic and ineffective Election event, not to mention a failed and error ridden Election Result. Most boroughs train their Poll workers, so if by chance there are no Coordinators and the Election Board needs to utilize the expertise of a Poll Worker in the Place of a Coordinator, the Poll Worker should have a basic understanding of the Election Process just through the training. This Coordinator just wanted to be notice, but if he did such a horrible job, failing to perform marginally well, turning in an Election Result error ridden, well he should want to remain anonymous.

Yours Truly

An Election Worker

Ed

The poll workers I saw really tried to work hard, but it should be a scandal that they get training beforehand. Or that there is now little privacy when voting.

But I'm actually considering using a vacation day and doing this. I wonder if they would get more, and better qualified, pollworkers if this was a federal holiday.

Rufus T. Firefly

My advice? Two words: absentee ballot.

rdayk

I've done it, and it's not really "sweet coin" to work from 6 a.m. to 9:30 or later, however long it takes to close up the polling place. You get two one-hour breaks but it's still a 15-hour day. At best, it's annoying, at worst, it's mind-numbingly tedious. You cannot use a laptop or watch television on your iPad or whatever gadget you might have to divert you - that's forbidden, and you will be dismissed if they catch you. They usually don't mind if you read discreetly as long as there are no voters at your table. Very few people get to sit in the 'rubber room' all day; there is usually a shortage of poll workers and everyone gets assigned to a location. The pay rate isn't terrible - after all, you don't have to pay taxes on it - so it works out to be around $17 an hour, but I wouldn't say it's a sweet deal, considering the length of the day. Most of the poll workers are at least 80 years old and somewhat addle-brained, or else marginally employable and nearly indigent, plus a handful of college students and do-gooders who want to be civically engaged.

John L

You sound like a very lazy person and that's coming from a person who went to worked fulltime while going to college fulltime then held two fulltime jobs for a few years.

You actually expect them to allow you to watch TV while you're suppose to be working? Incredible.

John L

"the board's P.R. firm (with which it has a $6.7 million contract ) "

I still can't figure out the people that condemn the poor people that out of necessity have to turn to social programs but see nothing wrong with thing like this. Do you know how many welfare mothers it takes to add up to $6.7 million? What in God's name does the Board of Elections need a PR firm for?

That's $6.7 MILLION, for what? To send you press releases and tell us they didn't fuck up that bad?

Imagine all the good $6.7 million can do.

thefacts

"did you know poll workers make some pretty sweet coin? $225 a day!"

Figuring for time-and-a-half overtime, they get paid $11.25 an hour!

That's would work out to be less than $23,000 a year.

(As considering they are 'salaried' employees, that is still only $14 an hour.)

Plus, not a benefit or compensation, like other workers get.

$11.25 an hour is 'sweet coin' for working 16 hours straight in a boring job, dealing with a cantankerous public?

$11.25 an hour is 'sweet coin'?

Nyctini11

So he spoke to you on "conditions of anonymity" yet you said what place he reported to(the Sr. Ctr. in Clinton) and his specific title(assuming they aren't all coordinators), doesn't seem very anonymous to me, hopefully he still gets paid.