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HERALD Senior STAFF WRITER
 Lance Martin | Daily Herald There was plenty of pizza courtesy of Weldon Pizza at the Small Town Economic Prosperity Demonstration Program Thursday. |
Board of Elections Director Jacqueline Taylor and her staff have been keeping very busy training both new and experienced pollworkers for what many experts are saying could be one of the largest voter turnouts in history.
The effort has required the addition of several new temporary positions to Taylor’s usual staff of three. Taylor and Assistant Director Kristin Smith, whom Taylor calls her “right hand,” have been teaching up to two training seminars each day.
“We had 50 attend last Tuesday’s evening session,” Taylor said. With One-Stop Early voting beginning Oct. 16, she is still confident she will have the necessary 120 pollworkers trained and ready to serve voters across the county. That number is the minimum Taylor says are needed. Pollworker applications are still being accepted in the elections office.
“We really need around 140 to work in our 30 precincts. The largest, Roanoke Rapids 9, 10 and 11, and also Hollister, usually need seven,” Taylor said.
“We are always looking for good people to work the precincts. We’ve had quite a bit of turnover during the last eight years, as many of the longtime workers decide to quit, so we still need good people to come in and serve.”
The pollworkers at each precinct consist of a chief judge, judges and assistants. The chief judge is in charge of the precinct and is responsible for everything that happens at that precinct.
They must pick up voting supplies on election eve and arrive at the precinct no later than 6 a.m., but even before that, they are responsible for coordinating and facilitating set up at the polling location. With precincts usually installed in schools, churches and businesses, that often requires meeting with building administrators days before the election so that all goes smoothly on election day.
The chief judge also administers the oath to judges and assistants who have not been sworn in previously. They are all sworn election officials. The chief judges must keep the voting tabulator keys with them at all times on election day and are responsible for signing all necessary machine tapes, poll books, seals and forms before and after the close of election.
They must also answer all questions from voters during a day that can run as long as 14 hours before they get home. The polls officially close at 7:30 p.m., but if voters are still in line, the pollworkers must start a list from the end of the line to the front, and allow those citizens to vote that evening.
After closing the precinct, the chief judge and crew count all of the ballots, including spoiled and unused ones. They count write-ins and list each. They unlock the M100 Tabulator and check the public counter with the number in the poll book. If there is a discrepancy, they must find the reason.
There are several cross-checks that must be performed to make sure there were no other discrepancies before actually transmitting results from the M100 Tabulator to the Board of Elections office, and these are just a few of their responsibilities on election day.
There were 17 new and experienced workers at the Tuesday morning seminar Taylor and Smith taught. The M100 Tabulator was set up, along with an Automark unit that assists impaired voters. A 22-page training booklet accompanied the PowerPoint presentation used to train and prepare the workers.
As Taylor left Smith with the training seminar and returned to her office, she said that North Carolina is known as one of the most well-respected and advanced voting places in the country.
She said the M100 Tabulator has several back-up systems in place, in the event something goes wrong, and the N.C. State Board of Elections works very well with all 100 county boards to make sure each election is fair, impartial and above reproach.
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