Election Work

Today was the first day I worked at the election office. There were six people in our conference room and at least ten in the larger conference room at City Hall. Our job was to remove completed mail-in ballots from an outer and an inner envelope. The outer envelopes are stored separately as they have personal voter information on them. Once these envelopes were set aside, we opened the second envelope which contained the actual ballot.

This process is done so that nobody knows who the voter is for a specific ballot. Once the ballots are opened and the precinct is checked, the ballots are put in stacks of 25 and two judges initial the top of the ballot. After all of the ballots for a specific precinct are compiled and the ballot count is verified, the ballots are fed into the voting machine.

The voting machine has a flash drive that stores the data. This flash drive is behind a sealed door. The seal will be opened on November 5th at 8:00pm when the polls close and the results of these ballots will be learned at that time. Meanwhile, the paper ballots are handled/stored by election officials.

Two of us in our room were new to working at the polls. The other four people were supportive and nice. I love Minnesota nice so much. There are three more days I am scheduled to help at the polls. This coming Saturday is my next shift of three hours. I am a bit excited to see which job I will be assigned.

Meanwhile, Joe continues to work in his shop. He had another delivery today - I think it was the surface plate that weighs 600 pounds. I know he loves that he has an engine hoist that can lift up to two and a half tons. 

And the fundraiser for Homeward Bound Golden Retriever Rescue started today! I am so excited at the online turn-out so far. And the host, Deb, is AMAZING. She is witty and is making her own recipe posts as we go along. See the thing is that Deb does not cook ... So here is her first recipe!