Title: Chronicles of an Election Poll Worker: Training Day | HuffPost
Headings: Chronicles of an Election Poll Worker: Training Day
Chronicles of an Election Poll Worker: Training Day
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Content: I learned many comforting facts about our nation’s thoroughness and appreciation for voting, such as: if you don’t have hands or legs, you can vote with your mouth. If you hate all of the candidates, you can submit a blank ballot in protest. Animals are allowed inside voting booths, and there’s no specification as to which kind of animals are allowed, so one must allow all animals that seem to be assisting people. Our instructors treated us like employees, explaining to us in their cartoony voices that we could be fired for being on our phones, eating on top of a stack of ballots, or losing a ballot altogether. Their gestures and mannerisms reminded me of two baby Marty Markowitzes, proud of their borough and their nation but at the same time knowing fully well that most of us were there to get paid and go home rather than partake in the intricate process that makes us a free country. A large portion of training was learning how to be respectful towards other voters because our kindness would ensure that they vote again. Only 768,703 Brooklynites voted in the 2008 presidential election, a small fraction of the borough’s population of two million. Though we were being trained to anticipate a voting mass of thousands, the veterans in my training session said they’d never seen more than 100 people vote throughout the day. This surprised me, but I did not admit that I had voted absentee in the last election because I didn’t want to be around other New Yorkers, as most New Yorkers would probably understand.