After 2000, all eyes are on Florida poll workers

BY BETH KASSAB

The Orlando Sentinel   29 October 2004

ORLANDO, Fla. - (KRT) - If every vote is going to count, then it's important to make sure people such as Paul Dworkin know how to count them.

On Election Day, the world will be watching Dworkin and thousands of others who will work in Florida's precincts.

In what is being billed as the most important election of our lifetime, the validity of the process will again come down to an army of temporary workers, most of whom have up to three hours of training.

"I take it just as seriously as I take my work," said Dworkin, an orthopedic technician at Orlando Regional Medical Center, of his assigned duty to hand out ballots in a Hunter's Creek precinct. "This is like a civic duty."

Four years ago, when it took 36 days to determine Bush won the presidency, part of the blame was laid on the Florida workers who forgot ballots in the back seat of a car, pressed the wrong button on voting machines and turned rightful voters away from the polls.

Reforms required monumental changes in voting machines and procedures, but poll-worker training and recruitment got less attention.

"It's a very important function, and it's not being done in the right way," said Nancy Tate, national executive director of the League of Women Voters. "It's so decentralized. There's no federal association of poll workers, nothing even that lets poll workers talk to each other."

This year, election supervisors throughout the state are attempting to better prepare workers for what is expected to be an exhausting 14-hour day fraught with tension as Republicans and Democrats comb precincts for fraud or other problems that could affect the outcome of the presidential contest.

After 2000, lawmakers mandated those workers, many of whom are retirees, receive up to three hours of training that includes lessons on helping disabled voters, using the equipment and resolving conflicts. But it's up to each of the state's 67 election supervisors to organize their own training classes.

Many said they already had similar classes in place four years ago but added new emphasis to potential problems that could throw an election into question.

"Our poll workers are concerned and very aware of the fact that they need to do it as correctly as possible," said Marcy Chaffin, precinct-staffing administrator in Volusia County. Workers there receive as much as six hours of training.

"You are part of history in the making," Orange County systems engineer Dane Beavers told a group learning how to use the county's vote-tabulator machines earlier this week.

The workers will be responsible for everything from assembling the voting machines to handing out ballots, making sure they are properly counted and returned to county offices.

Overseeing each precinct will be a clerk, an experienced worker, who will resolve problems such as challenges of a voter's eligibility from party representatives.

"What I'm sensing is there's a lot of hostility, and people are just waiting for something to go wrong and I hate to see that," said Stephan Rheaume, who has worked as a precinct clerk in Orange for eight years. "The primaries were not this way at all. This is the first time I'm a little uneasy."

Orange County Supervisor Bill Cowles said most of his 2,800 poll workers are experienced. For some, Tuesday will be their fourth election in 13 months, including the August primary, March city elections and the transportation sales-tax referendum held last year.

He also said fixes were made since 2000 to make sure some of the same problems don't happen again. Access to the "override" button on the vote tabulator, for example, will be kept under lock and key accessible only to the clerk.

In 2000, Precinct 605 in southwest Orlando recorded 79 ballots on which the voter marked more than one choice for president, causing them to be tossed out. The reason: A confused poll worker pushed the "override" button when the tabulator warned of a mismarked ballot instead of allowing the voter to correct it.

Election supervisors are also stressing this year that poll workers should never turn anyone away.

In Polk County, for example, only the top two workers at each precinct have the authority to prevent a potential voter from casting a ballot, and even then, only if they are at the wrong precinct, Elections Supervisor Lori Edwards said.

Provisional ballots have been used in several other elections in the past two years, so "the provisionals don't feel new to them," Edwards said.

In one training class earlier this week, Cowles emphasized that workers should not take for granted what may seem like the simplest aspects of the voting process - such as a voter's ability to properly mark a choice on a ballot.

In Orange County, that means connecting a broken arrow next to the candidate's name.

"Do not assume that any voter knows how to do it!" Cowles said, eliciting some uncomfortable laughs from the workers, who remember all too well the turmoil endured by their counterparts in South Florida, where punch-card ballots wreaked havoc in 2000.

As for Dworkin, he said he's going to be on guard but says plans by the parties to have attorneys stationed at each precinct is "extreme."

"I think that's just ridiculous," he said, adding, "It's not an infallible system. You have humans working it, and humans aren't perfect."

Chris Sherman and Kevin Connolly of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.