Polling place disruptions in all forms test poll workers’ preparedness
Just after 11:00 on the morning of Election Day in mid-July, poll workers at two sites in Maricopa County, AZ, found themselves in the dark.
Literally. Lights out. Power was lost that morning to just 1,800 customers in the county, but two active vote centers were among them. Additionally, a few e-pollbooks elsewhere in the county briefly had connectivity issues.
Between backups, redundancies, and power restoration within the hour, voting didn’t skip a beat, and we tip our hat to the poll workers who handled it all. This article is a tribute to all front-line election workers who have ever dealt with an unwelcome surprise, and a survey of election headlines shows there is no shortage of unexpected disruptions.
Power outages are so common that most voting machines are designed to run for hours on battery backup. Yet a voting site outage is always a mini-crisis. In recent elections, poll workers had to rely on backup procedures when lights went out in Sandoval County, New Mexico, Flint, Michigan, four counties (including at least 76 polling locations) in North Texas, and many other polling locations across the country.
Sometimes the cause of the outage is more concerning than the outage itself. Poll workers at three precincts in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, sheltered in place during a tornado warning (when a tornado is sighted) in a recent election. Storm conditions can also cause a domino effect of ballot paper swelling, preventing ink from drying and causing ballots to catch in machines, prompting error messages.
Disagreements outside polling places may not be rare, but it’s not common for them to unfold into a physical fight, like this one involving an outgoing council member in Bowie, Maryland, and the husband of a candidate. Poll workers can wind up in the middle, trying to separate antagonists, re-establish boundaries, restore calm, and ensure that the public feels safe entering and leaving.
The Bowie incident was tame compared to what a Clinton County, Indiana, precinct team faced during early voting. Confronted by a voter furious at being unable to cast his ballot, two poll workers were punched before police quickly restored order – fortunately, without injury. Still, the poll workers took the brunt of the voter’s anger just for doing their job.
Another class of unwelcome surprise is animal control. Workers at a Baltimore, Maryland, polling place had to call in a midday complaint about not only an infestation of mice, but also fleas. The building landlord countered that only one person had seen the mice, and that the fleas might have merely been other insects, misidentified. Unmollified, the workers convinced the election office to move their precinct to another site.
We offer a special shout-out to election staff from Cache County, Utah, who entered their counting facility and found several dead snakes on the floor. This only partially prepared them for the live snakes looking down on them from rafters and door frames.
At press time, we are unable to find reports of bears or mountain lions interfering with voting, but if it happens, resourceful poll workers will figure out who to call and what to do. To help make sure they’re ready for whatever comes their way, review the new emergency response templates in the Resource Library section of this newsletter.
The Situation Room focuses on real security incidents and threats in the news relevant to election security. To review previous issues, see the newsletter archive.