This coming Tuesday is election day for Wake County...again. We election officials will arrive at our polling precinct at 6am and scramble for the next 30 minutes to do all the last minute jobs (pull out ballots, set up the automark counting machine and ballot holder, mark off the 25ft no campaigning line, etc). At 6:30am, the polls open, and our LONG day begins. It's not a hard day. The job itself is relatively easy. The Board of Elections provides us with a very nice indexed binder in case we forget something from training, and we also have these nifty little flow charts to help us with almost any scenario. In the event something goes wrong, we have a phone number to call the Wake County BOE for answers. The job is fairly straightforward and simple.
At approximately 9am, our trickle of voters will stop. From 9am to about 3pm, we'll have an occasional voter. (In all, we'll process maybe 300 people...and that's a high estimate.) And the rest of the time we are simply stuck there until 7:30pm when the polls close. We're actually stuck there until 8:30 or 9pm, but we're working frantically during that time. It's the down time that seems so bad (and is none-existent during presidential or controversial elections).
Our supervisor likes to visit our polling place, because most of the officials in our precinct are crafters. It's not uncommon to find knitting, quilting, sewing, scrapbooking and crocheting all happening at the same time. So sometime between now and Monday night I have to figure out what to pack up. I have a baby quilt I started last election I can take to work on, or some patterns and material to cut out, my sketchbook, crocheting needles and yarn to continue my disastrous crocheting lessons with another official, books, all of the above OR I could start a totally new project. I refuse to drag scrapbooking materials there because it's simply too much stuff to haul and I'd invariably forget something I needed. It's a pity I can't take electronic devices or I might jump off the cliff and start NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) after all.
So if you had four-five hours where you were unable to leave a confined vicinity, what would you take to do?
At approximately 9am, our trickle of voters will stop. From 9am to about 3pm, we'll have an occasional voter. (In all, we'll process maybe 300 people...and that's a high estimate.) And the rest of the time we are simply stuck there until 7:30pm when the polls close. We're actually stuck there until 8:30 or 9pm, but we're working frantically during that time. It's the down time that seems so bad (and is none-existent during presidential or controversial elections).
Our supervisor likes to visit our polling place, because most of the officials in our precinct are crafters. It's not uncommon to find knitting, quilting, sewing, scrapbooking and crocheting all happening at the same time. So sometime between now and Monday night I have to figure out what to pack up. I have a baby quilt I started last election I can take to work on, or some patterns and material to cut out, my sketchbook, crocheting needles and yarn to continue my disastrous crocheting lessons with another official, books, all of the above OR I could start a totally new project. I refuse to drag scrapbooking materials there because it's simply too much stuff to haul and I'd invariably forget something I needed. It's a pity I can't take electronic devices or I might jump off the cliff and start NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) after all.
So if you had four-five hours where you were unable to leave a confined vicinity, what would you take to do?
Comments
I would take a book for sure :)