JoE The Multitasker (Nov. 7, 2008)

JoE, of course, is shorthand for Judge of Elections, and multi-tasking is what I did all day Tuesday. Here is what I did for a lot of the day, all at once:

1) As JoE, I processed each voter whose registration was gummed up in some way. For each, I called Downtown to resolve the problem. This involved 10 to 20 tries to get through, followed by five minutes on hold, followed by five minutes or more of trying various searches -- name, date of birth, various addresses, SSN, etc. -- to identify the voter and figure out the situation. I avoided about 30 Provisional Ballots this way, and for many of those, jumped the line that person would be in by leaning over the shoulder of the pollworker of that line to pull the right card and make the proper notations in the book, then put that voter in a booth.

2) Sitting next to the R-Z line, with a single pollworker, I was copying the names into the logs for that pollworker.

3) Also for R-Z, since that line was stretched out directly in front of me, I pulled the voter cards from the "can" -- the cardfile box -- for the next four people. This saved the pollworker many precious seconds per voter.

4) Often while still on hold, I got up and walked around to my other seated pollworkers to see if they had any problems, and to the three pollworkers who were putting people in booths.

5) While up, again with a cell phone plastered to my ear while being on hold, I would police the waiting line myself, trying to make sure people were in the right line. Sometimes I handed this off to one of the Election Protection people.

Once no longer on hold, of course, I would dash back to my chair where my voter was still waiting for me to return and process his/her situation. If I ended up having to do a Provisional Ballot -- there ended up being 18 of them -- then I would have to spend another 5 to 10 minutes explaining that process, filling out my part, and getting my Minority Inspector's signature, on each.

Busy doesn't describe it. Not being busy means I was only doing two things at a time.

This went on all day.