Election reflection…

No, this is not going to be my opinion about the 2024 general election outcome — just some observations I made while serving as a poll worker two weeks prior to the Nov. 5 general election and on election day itself.

I worked as Same Day Registration (SDR) clerk at the Mesilla Town Hall from Oct. 19 through Nov. 2, and then on election day Nov. 5 as a Same Day Registration Clerk and Machine Judge.

The SDR job entails registering persons who present required proper identification to vote or change their address and then casting their ballot that same day. Required proper identification includes a government issued document with their photo (usually a driver’s license or U.S. Passport), documentation of their current physical address (no post office boxes) and their Social Security Number. We also ask everyone if they are a citizen of the United States and are a resident of New Mexico. If they answer no to either of these questions, they cannot vote. They also can only vote for a slate of officers in Dona Ana County.

There is an exception to this rule which we learned about this year. A person outside of the county where they are registered can vote by provisional ballot only for the national and candidates if they go through a special application process at the County Clerk’s office. We had one such case in which a woman from Albuquerque who had been on temporary assignment in Las Cruces for several weeks prior to the election wanted to vote for candidates in the national and statewide races. She could not vote for down ballot candidates or local bond issues in either Dona Ana County or her home Bernalillo County, but was able to vote for President, Senate and Congressional candidates.

The Machine Judge job is basically to act a second in command under the Presiding Judge at the polling location on voting day and to take voting results to the county election warehouse as soon as possible after polls close. Items taken to the warehouse include a printed voting results tape, an electronic chip which contains voting results, provisional ballots, spoiled ballots, absentee ballots, write-in ballots and documents confirming proper transfer of the voting results and other documents. I suspect I signed at least 10 different documents confirming I had done everything properly, and had not stopped on a bar on my way to the election warehouse, sold the election machine chips to a Russian operative or fiddled with the machine voting tapes. (Okay, I made that last part up, but it was clear to me that the process was tamper-proof).

I worked from about 10:15 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. on early voting days. On election day, I worked from before 6 a.m. to almost 11 p.m. One of my colleagues at another polling location said she did not get home until 1:30 on the morning after election night.

Enough background. Here’s what I observed.

Everything worked very smoothly until election day when many, many people decided to register to vote at the last minute. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver told a legislative committee this week that the number of people doing same day registration was far greater than they had anticipated. Regular voters had no trouble at our polling location with voting — the longest wait time was maybe five minutes.

Those who chose to wait until the last minute to register were faced with wait times of up to an hour and 45 minutes. When our polls closed on election day at 7 p.m., we had no voters waiting in line, but there were almost 20 people still waiting to register. We did not get them processed and cleared to vote until far past 8:30 p.m. I suspect we had more than a dozen people who finally just got tired of waiting for their registration to be processed and left without casting a vote.

My observation is that many of these last minute registrations were by younger people, mostly under the age of 30 and many of them students at New Mexico State University. The University students, particularly those living on campus, were always a challenge to get registered because they did not know the street address of their dorm and they didn’t remember their Social Security number. Many of the students were merely changing their address so they could vote in Las Cruces, but they could have done this any day within the past three weeks, or earlier if they had gone to the county clerk’s office.

There were of course a few surprises with some elderly people registering to vote for their very first time. I think one of them was in her 80s.

Another observation is that the majority of Hispanic males under age 30 registered as Republicans, likely voting for Donald Trump for President. I think that has been borne out in subsequent post-election analyses.

A third observation is that I simply could not tell by their appearance — especially in younger people — which party they were likely to register as.

A young woman covered in tattoos wearing what I’d call “peasant look” clothing and multiple body piercings registered as a Republican. A young cowboy who drove up in a mud-splattered Ford F-250 wearing an Ariat shirt and a belt buckle as large as the state of Delaware registered as a Democrat. It was a clear case of not being able to judge a book by looking at its cover.

We had no disruptions during voting. We had Republican registered party challengers/observers three different times and one Democratic registered challenger/observer for half a day on election day. A third independent election watch organization also was at the polling location much of the time.

I had to ask one person to remove a hat that promoted Donald Trump, but he complied without incident. Another person (a former county clerk) walked in wearing a Democrat branded hat and t-shirt, but quickly realized he needed to remove the items of clothing and did so without prompting by poll workers. (Electioneering, including wearing of political apparel, is not allowed within 100 feet of the polling location.) Some group calling themselves “Election Protection” showed up on election day wearing shirts proclaiming that they were there to protect the election, but they had not registered as observers or challengers and were told to leave. The organization, I later learned from their website, is a national group devoted to assuring that everyone who is eligible gets to vote. I think they should have spent more time learning about the requirements to be at polling locations to observe and/or assist.

We also had one guy who swooped in unannounced and began photographing the election machines, apparently looking for proof that they were connected to the Internet. (They are NOT connected to the Internet). He was quickly told to leave.

Other than many long hours and the last day frustration with people waiting to register to vote at the last minute, it was a good experience — one that I will likely do again. I got to visit briefly with many people who I had not seen in years who stopped at the Mesilla Town Hall to vote.

And I got to have my picture taken with Mrs. New Mexico, Catherine Czaja, who stopped by several polling locations during the day.