WORKING AT THE POLLS

Yesterday I spent the day working as an election officer in Prince William County. We were busy, but not nearly as busy we could have been. Because of early voting (mostly voting in person, but with lots more mail-in ballots than usual) about 65 percent of the electorate had already voted in my precinct. So, on Election Day the turnout just increased to 80 percent. We were busy, but we were not swamped with voters.

Was early voting a good idea? I think so, and based upon what I saw I am convince we can make in-person voting work better. We had bipartisan teams of election officers monitoring the process and voters liked the convenience, and in-person voting doesn’t automatically leave large numbers of ballots completely outside of control of election officers. In addition, when a voter is at the polls, they can see whether their vote is recorded and…