Larry Hosken: New: Poll Clerking 2022

Friends, I have a tale of luxury and decadence.

November 8, 2022, I once again volunteered as a poll clerk for a San Francisco election. Though California was a vote-by-mail state, it had only been so for a few years; thus San Francisco had 500 polling places in garages, firehouses, schools, etc etc.

This was my swankiest clerking gig yet. I and five other clerks were set up in Jay's house's basement garage. Jay was enthusiastic about hosting his neighbors. Thus, the front of the garage had polling booths, poll clerks, and other official election stuff, the back of the garage had a free espresso bar where Jay made coffee and fancy Italian sodas for voters, neighbors, and poll clerks.

I clerked at 321 Carl St., home of the Carl St. Free Library (the one housed in a repurposed phone booth). This was very close to my apartment, on the same rectangular block. If I'd voted in person instead of by mail, this was my assigned polling place. Most of my fellow clerks also lived within a few blocks.

Each year, the San Francisco Department of Elections has assigned me to a different polling place. I assumed this was a security measure: if a crew of clerks works together year after year, they might conspire to corrupt the process. But apparently that's not what was going on: many of these clerks had worked together before in Jay's garage.

My new theory: The San Francisco Department of Elections tries to assign each clerk to a polling place close to where they live, with higher-seniority clerks higher priority. My first assignment had been 1.9km away from home; my second 1.6km away; my third 0.6 km. Jay's garage was 0.3km away (or less if I was willing to machete through some overgrown backyard blackberry vines, but I wasn't).

The crew was:

• Nancy: Poll Inspector, fearless leader
• Victoria: Crafty
• Phillip: Clerk who had experience as an Inspector
• Sarah: Tech writer
• Kayden: High school student
• Me: Comic relief

We had six people‽

San Francisco had four elections in 2022; this was the fourth. In the weeks leading up to the third election, the SF Department of Elections had got pretty desperate for poll workers, sending out a lot of emails, calling potential poll workers on the phone, and they'd expected to be even more desperate for this November election. I think four people could have handled this polling place just fine; having seen the SF D. of E.'s prior desperation, I was expecting+dreading being one of just three pollworkers at a site, stretched thin.

With six people, we were the opposite of stretched thin. Clerks would kind of zone out because there were always other clerks to handle things. I noticed others doing this; I caught myself zoning out a couple of times. At one point, a voter entering the garage was put off when three clerks, glad for something to do, all talked over each other with greetings.

(Later, I saw that the SF Department of Elections was running a survey for in-person voters, floating the idea: what if, instead of 500 little polling places around the city on election day, we had 50 medium-sized election centers around the city for election day and a few days before? I guess this was an attempt to be more efficient, given that California is now a mail-in-voting state and that staffing up 500 polling places is difficult. (But if our polling place was overstaffed this election, maybe it's not really difficult? I dunno.) The idea made sense to me, a mostly-mail-in voter (except that time my ballot didn't show up) who could easily walk a few blocks to an election center. But I guess the survey's for in-person voters, especially those who might have trouble schlepping 1km to vote.)

Setup went very smoothly. Setup never goes smoothly. But BUT the excellent host Jay set up the voting booths in his garage before election day. Setting up those balky booths takes a lot time. Jay's efforts meant the difference between the usual frenzy (clerks hustling like hell to be almost-but-not-really ready at the official poll opening time) and a pretty chill prep (clerks ready several minutes before poll opening, looking over the donut selection (did I mention Jay bought donuts?)).

The end-of-night count+cleanup also went very smoothly because Phillip was very experienced and had much of the process memorized. While I was fumbling with my instruction book to remember what to do next, Phillip had probably already done that next thing and a couple of other things too, and just needed me to double-check his counting (which was correct).

The day before the election, I'd noticed that the polling place was decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. So I wore my red, white, and blue necktie to match. It's a pretty wacky tie; but didn't seem so over-the-top in context.

I eavesdropped on Sarah talking about tech writing. As a hoary industry veteran, I have opinions and braced myself to resist the urge to break in with a "Well, actually…" but, well, actually Sarah had astute thoughts about tech writing. This next generation is doing fine, the kids are alright, etc.

The youths (e.g., Kayden our high school student) are not familiar with the song oldie "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)," so if you make a joke around that song about what voters should do with their mail-in ballot before dropping it in the ballot box, it might be a dud.

One thing that was neat/awkward about clerking so close to home: I knew some of the voters. There were some double-takes; both because of seeing each other in an unusual context; and then there was that necktie.