Backstage at the Election

The time since my last post has been spent doing tedious but necessary work behind the scenes at the county elections office. Here is where more things happen to a ballot than you could ever imagine. Each county and state are responsible for their own voting systems; ours happened to win a national award for the accountability and accuracy of its many-step process. From the initial incoming mail scan to signature verification to the final tabulation, great pains are taken to ensure voter anonymity and that each vote is counted, no matter how long it takes.

Most of the 600 temporary employees recruited for this election have one thing in common: we're otherwise unemployed. Granted, many election workers are retirees there to contribute to an important process while picking up some pocket money. But the majority of us are job seekers in transition, unsure of where this crazy economy is going to take (or leave) us. A lot of us are middle aged women having trouble finding a job; I have spoken to a few who've been searching for close to a year. There is some comfort in numbers.


Working in this warehouse-like space with hundreds of others who need the money makes me remember that getting by in this life often requires tolerance for tedium. Nearly a week after the election, we still have 40,000 ballots to process, all necessitating manual intervention of some kind. Days are long, from eight to six. Our breaks are regulated to make sure bathrooms and cafeterias are not overrun by all of us at once; lunch is just a half hour and then it's back to work. Eyeballing ballot after ballot, one at a time, is exhausting work and enough to make you cross-eyed. On the bright side, we all make fifteen and a half dollars an hour. In another life, we could be slaves in a sweat shop, or cigarette rollers in China making a couple of dollars a day. At least for us the drudgery is temporary and it goes a long way toward bill paying.

In my younger days I might have gotten caught up in resentment for "having" to do this work, or agitation for not being at some elusive dream job that dangles like a carrot before we idealists. These days I am grateful for the work, for the company, and for the chance to be part of the historic, amazing election of Barack Obama, who will try to fix the economy (among other things) and get us back to regular jobs.

And if I feel a twinge of defeatism, I can remember the story of my Uncle George's 3-hour train ride from south Jersey to his Manhattan office each morning; he would do it in reverse at day's end. He did this for fifteen years. I don't know how, really – he was part of that generation that had a more practical and patient attitude toward life. It wasn't all about getting what you wanted, when you wanted it. In his case, he had a family who dearly loved him waiting for his arrival each night. They filled the time between the tedium, year after year, and gave him the strength to do what he needed to do.