Am I Blue?

Without much surprise this morning I opened up Drudge this morning  to read that once again my once beloved commonwealth had voted ‘blue’ again. From the highlighted headline and supplemental reading from Instapundit, I gather that the general consensus is that Gillespie ran a ‘Jeb lite’ campaign that didn’t sit well with the deplorable Trump electorate. I can’t disagree with that analysis. Having said that, allow me to offer the following counterpoint.

Since I was an original tea party republican volunteer back before it was fashionable to say such a thing or drive around with a Gadsden flag license plate, I am on the email list for the Prince William Country republican volunteers. Thus, in the closing days of the campaign, I was on the receiving end of more than a few emails asking for ‘poll help’ from my district head. Here’s the gist of the last email that I received from him:

Crunch time folks--we still need people to cover precincts on election day, in particular we need people at:

<list of precincts>

If you can help for a couple of hours it would help.

We also need help at the following precincts to give other volunteer a break during the day--working from 6 AM to 7 PM is a pretty long day.

Note, he is very persistent as this was just one of the numerous emails he sent out. I admire his diligence. On the surface he’s getting things done. The underbelly of the thing is another story. As anyone who has read my post is aware, I think the voting system in Prince William County is fatally flawed. I don’t necessarily attribute this to the County as much as the Republican’s unwillingness to confront the system and pursue the legal avenues they have available to fix the problem. Thus, this was my response:

I debated with myself as to how or even if I should answer this email, but in the end I thought I would anyway as there is some small chance that you and the other addressee here might just listen.

I know on some level you believe that posting people outside the polls handing out sample ballots makes a difference. I disagree with that, but it does seem to be the prevailing philosophy of our local party leadership, so by all means I admire your perseverance in following that guidance.

Where I have serious misgivings is your determination to see the outsides of the polls manned, while refusing, and, in the case of the 2016 election, doing your best to ensure there were no Republican observers in the polls in the district. When I questioned you about it at the time you brushed it off as only the concern of 'the campaign' to have observers in the polls.. a patently false premise that is the primary reason I have not assisted with any election effort since.

I see from these emails you are once again pursuing the same strategy. I do have to wonder though why you and the Republican leadership seem so steadfastly uninterested in observing what is going on inside the polls? Do you believe there is no possibility of fraud? If that is the case, why advocate for paper ballots? Is it not in the interest of a fair democracy to place those observers there to protect the one place where our citizens can influence our government?

Believe me, I do not come at this with vindictiveness or as some wild haired fanatic. I've seen year after year our party withdraw from observing the polls, while year after year I see the Democrats there observing. The neutrality of the polling places has  steadfastly decreased. There are Democratic flyers piled in chairs next to the polls, and in the case of absentee in person voting, the scanning of ballots seemed to be done multiple times. 

I certainly can't say that anything irregular was going on, but it strikes me as off that you and our county leadership seem to be taking the one thing that really matters, assurance of voting integrity, so casually.

So no, I will not take another vacation day from my work to assist you with what I think is merely rearranging the deck chairs on our party's sinking Titanic in Prince William County. Of course I and the other voting age adults in my family will go to the polls and vote, because that's our duty.

I do understand that you and the other party leaders are volunteers and are trying to do the best you can. I appreciate that. I also recognize that just because you volunteered, that doesn't mean that we should somehow expect less from you. The Army certainly didn't when I as a kid of 18 raised my hand over 40 years ago. 

I ask that you seriously consider my words and please consider moving those people inside the polls to observe, at all precincts, ones you are sure are fair and those where you know off things happen. I recognize they probably won't be able to spot irregularities, but at least they'll be there to give the Democrats who might be engineering some funny business some pause. 

And by all means find someone to man the absentee polls in the government center, at least occasionally; it's just across the street from the Hut - how hard is it to walk in there occasionally and see what's going on? Or look in on the mailed absentee ballot processing office. Until our county leadership gets serious about vote integrity, I can't really believe they are serious about winning state wide or national elections.

Ok, that's off my chest. I do sincerely hope we prevail and don't end up with yet another Democrat victory on our county. Good luck and prayers for a free and fair election.

His response was telling. Here’s what he said:

The committee leadership actually discussed this and based on what people who have actually worked the polls said decided that the outside should be the priority since if there is any fraud it's been committed long before Election Day i.e. during the voter registration process.

In any event, both the Rich Anderson and Scott Lingamfelter campaigns are having poll watchers inside the polls on 7 November.  I will forward you their respective campaign's contact info so you can coordinate with which ever one you want to help.

You should know that with 15 precincts in Coles we trying to do with 25 people what really requires at least 60.

All your ideas are great--too bad not enough people volunteer to actually do it.

So there is a nutshell is why we are stuck with a Democrat in Virginia’s governor mansion for another 4 years:

1.      The county leadership doesn’t think fraud is a problem, and somehow thinks the fraud has to do with something other than people casting votes on election day.

2.      The county leadership still does not take the lead in assuring the county’s polling places are observed and policed by Republicans, leaving the job to understaffed campaigns.

3.      The county leadership is having a hard time getting enough people to stand outside and hand out sample ballots. This inability to inspire us to ‘show the flag’ on election day indicates to me that the rot here goes very deep.

So what did I see when I went to vote? Well, first off, it was a cold, nasty wet day. The republican door stander had a canopy stood up and was huddled under that. The democrat guy was just standing there in the rain. I’m not sure what that says other than I actually felt a little sorry for the guy standing in the rain. I am thinking the republican stander outside guy probably would have been better served by not erecting the canopy. It’s sort of bad optics, but then again it was a little funny that the Democrat didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.


Inside, there was no line. I suspect that with the weather being like it was, there was an extremely low turnout statewide. That being said, there were three tables of poll workers there ready to serve. Note that poll workers are supplied by the county and are supposed to be neutral. I observed nothing about their demeanor or actions to lead me to believe that wasn’t true. 


The gentleman who checked me in was a little odd. He didn’t ask me for ID. In fact, he didn’t say anything about an ID, but said ‘welcome’ and put out his hand. I found that a little odd. If ID is required, shouldn’t he had stated that? It made me wonder afterwards what he would have done if I had not pulled out my wallet and handed over my driver’s license, but maybe handed him a credit card or a library card.


The check in desk was very modern. Gone is the process where a checker in has to laboriously type in a voter’s name or look up the voter in and huge bound book of names. Nope, the complete system is automated. The checker in gentleman used a scanner on my driver’s license barcode, and a beep later was reading me my name and address. All I had to do was nod ‘yes’ and it was off to the races. Note there was none of two step verification that we have gotten used to in our digital world. Heck there wasn’t even a one step process where he asked me to spell my name or cite my address from memory. So the security of the mostly free state of Virginia’s election is nothing more than a nod and a hand wave. Wonderful.


I did note that there were a couple of observers observing the proceedings behind the check in booth, and one old guy in the corner man spreading on a folding chair. I did not ask them who they represented, but my guess from their eager young faces and sincere expression was they were probably from one of the local campaign. I would also guess that given his sour expression and extreme man spreading, the guy in the corner was a democrat observer, but perhaps I am projecting my own white guilt on him (yes he was a white guy). 


In the county, and indeed I think the whole state, we have gone to paper ballots. The checker in gentleman took a pristine ballot from a stack on his desk, then inserted it in a large manila folder marked ‘ballot folder’ on the front and handed it to me. Unfortunately this is where my observation skills failed me. I do not recall if he scanned the bar code on the ballot before placing it in the folder. From a security standpoint, that would be a great way of combating fraud as the scanner across the room could be programmed to reject ballots that were not registered at the check in desk in front of God and everyone. This would not prevent someone going to in a back room and scan registering bulk ballots then voting, but it would certainly make it a bit more difficult. 


I took the folder containing the ballot that I had been given and walked over to the folding tables set up with partitioned writing areas where I was assured a pen would be provided to facilitate the performance of my sacred voting duty. I assume that the partition was there to preserve the secret nature of the vote. That was a singularly dubious accomplishment as there were no poll workers anywhere near by to enforce proper voter etiquette.  In fact, much like when you avoid looking at another guy business at a urinal, I had to have the discipline to avoid snooping at what the gentleman already sitting across the table from be was doing as it was nigh impossible for me not to see over the slight partition as I sat down. It’s hard for me to say what other voters did. The voting public is much like guys in a restroom: no one makes eye contact.


The voting process itself was mostly straightforward. The ballot was a sheet of paper with all the candidates listed for each office, the governor slate was at the top left, and the other races in descending importance from there.  Each candidate’s party was listed, with a helpful decoder provided in the instructions on the wall of the table partiton. I noted with some bemusement that we had both ‘Green’ and ‘Independent Green’ party candidates for governor. I wondered if maybe next year we would have ‘Republican’ and ‘Green Republican’ candidates in future elections. It might indeed come to that sad state.


After placing my checks in the appropriate boxes I started to get up. I paused though when to analyst in the back of my head woke up. It noted that a scanner of the vintage of the ones used in our county probably couldn’t read just a checkmark. I eased back into my chair and industriously colored in all the boxes for my selected candidates. The engineer in me did wonder what would happen to my ballot if I had proceeded and the scanner failed to see my vote. Would the lady at the scanner send me back to the voting table to fill in the squares? I am sorry to say I can’t tell you what would have happened. I can state that I didn’t see anyone get sent back to the voting table while I was there. It’s quite possible that either the scanner was quite advanced, or all the voter I saw were, like me, possessing above average square filling skills. At the very least, I would hope that the scanning software would alert the poll worker to a missed vote so that they could ask the voter if they really intended to leave that vote open. I suppose we’ll never know unless the scanner itself has some diagnostic output that is available to the public.


The line to scan was short. After only minutes of waiting I was at the scanner. There were two ladies manning the machine. One was apparently responsible for tearing the ‘I voted’ sticker into individual slips, and the other was there to run the scanner. There scanner itself was sitting on a low table. It only had one wire, a chucky orange extension cord which was plugged into the wall across the room. I what was surely an OSHA violation, the power cable was not taped down. However the ladies at the machine seemed to be made of stern stuff and I doubt they were troubled by the possibility of any minor drama from a fall. 


The scanner running lady instructed me to place my ballot into the scanner face up. In theory, the partition dividing the front of the scanner from the back of the scanner would prevent the lady from seeing my secret vote. In practice due to the five inch partition and low setting table, everyone present could have seen my vote, including the people who were crowding in behind me. At this point it occurred to me that the sense of privacy that I get while going through security at the airport where the TSA guy scans your ticket and ID and ask you questions while your fellow passengers stand ten feet away was a lot more intimate then when I scanned my vote. Of course voting is just a democracy thing, the TSA screening is life or death. I guess you can’t really compare the two. But perhaps you should, theater is theater after all.


Walking out I wondered where all this is going. Are we destined to become mere players in the play that or democratic process is becoming, or will our leaders come to their senses and take up their roles as guardians of our process seriously. I think it is past time that the county, state, and even national republican leadership take a very hard look at the voting process and do something about its decline. If not, there are more than enough barbarians at the gate that are willing to subvert the process. Theater indeed.