Early voting jest

Sigh, as I feared when family members returned from early voting in Boston, all those ballots will be treated as absentee ones come Tuesday. That is, they will arrive in masses of envelopes inside larger envelopes for the wardens and clerks to process.

Our training for the recent primary included a promise that Elections would be able to process voters from the 255 precincts via smart computer tech. That would have meant fewer ballots for each precinct to handle. But no...

Don't be alarmed if your clerk or warden steps to the check-in table at each voting lull (should there be any) to rattle off a batch of voter names and addresses, then repeats the process to check each voter out before feeding the two pages of the ballot into the scanner. We'll try to do this so that it minimizes congestion.

The precinct where I'm warden has nearly 1,900 registered voters. Sec'y Galvin's has reported 11% to 15% or more are early voting. That would mean nearly 300 such ballots. That does not include the several dozen absentee ones. Thus, the potential for gumming up the works.

For the curious:

• Yes, we have to read out the address and name of each absentee or early voter and the worker checking them in has to repeat that info once (and only once). State law requires it in case any observer has one of the six reasons to challenge the validity of the ballot.
• No, we won't know how any particular voter chooses. After checking out the ballot, we batch remove the ballots from their envelopes, separating them from the identifying envelope, turning them face down for the candidate side of page one, and feed them one after another into the scanner.
• No, there is no in situ fix for ballot spoilage, like overvoting a race. In live voting, you can spoil two ballots and get a total of three chances. If early or absentee ballots are spoiled, we override them at the machine with a pencil or pen inserted into the scanner opening for this purpose. The scanner will count the ballots and record as much good info as it can.

Also, to disappoint the conspiracy minded, I warn that you may see your warden temporarily halt voting to mess with the machine. With two very long pages and the absentee and early voting returns already pre-folded, the ballot box is likely to fill and even jam.

Wardens should announce when they have to tend to the innards of the ballot box. They open them and tamp down or rearrange the ballots so they continue to feed. Maybe once or twice during the day, the warden will remove the ballots, place them in USED BALLOTS envelopes and place those envelopes in the gray ballot box that the police officer takes to Elections at the end of the night.

By the bye, that gray box goes into a double-locked in City Hall for 10 days, the period in which candidates or question proponent can ask for a hand recount. Like a parody of the Monty Python song, every ballot is sacred. We count them before handing them out, we keep and record each spoiled one, we count voted ones via the scanner, we record each provisional ballot (sent to Elections each in its separate envelope), we tediously record each write-in by name and office (even cartoon characters), and we count each unused ballot at the end of the 15-hour day. Finally, the clerk finishes the night by filling in elaborate spreadsheets accounting for each ballot.

Also, the check-in and check-out books must agree with each other. The ballot totals must balance, including starting, absentee, early voting, spoiled, provisional, and unused. The end of day is up to 90 minutes of counting, recording and computation.