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1. Embed this notice
   Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:59 JST Jonathan Kamens

   An aside, not actually part of the training...
   Provisional ballots are a pain in the ass to do. If you forgot to register to vote or your ballot is legitimately not going to be counted, then please, I'm begging you, don't waste the poll-workers' time by demanding to cast a provisional ballot.
   #pollWorkerTraining

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:52 JST Jonathan Kamens

     in reply to

     No campaigning or collecting signatures with 150 feet of the polling location entrance.
     No candidates inside the polling location glad-handing people.
     The police officer enforces these rules under the direction of the warden.
     (Not part of the training: generally the 150-foot rule is loosely enforced, but sometimes campaign volunteers do cross a line and we have to send the police officer outside to tell them to behave.)
     #pollWorkerTraining

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:53 JST Jonathan Kamens

     in reply to

     Anyone is allowed to observe the voting.
     They can bring their own list of voters to mark, listen to voter names being called out by poll-workers, and challenge voters for legitimate reasons.
     Observers can't ask for additional information about voters; block the voting path; discuss voting results wiht poll-workers; interact with voters while they are voting; or bring or wear political stuff in the voting area.
     #pollWorkerTraining

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:54 JST Jonathan Kamens

     in reply to

     People with disabilities have the right to vote in Massachusetts.
     They are allowed to ask poll-workers for assistance or have someone of their choosing accompany them to assist.
     There is an "AutoMARK" machine which assists visually impaired people via magnification and hearing impaired people by reading the ballot out loud.
     When should speak directly to the voter, not the person assisting them.
     #pollWorkerTraining

     Blaise Pabón - controlpl4n3 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:55 JST Jonathan Kamens

     in reply to

     In the September election some of the tabulators ran out of paper while printing the tapes, which caused "mass hysteria" (trainer's words, not mine) at city hall. We've therefore added slides to the training to show how to replace the tape roll. Presumably that means there will be replacement tape rolls included among the election supplies sent to each precinct?
     I hope they don't mean they'll courier tape rolls to the precincts only after they run out!
     #pollWorkerTraining

     Blaise Pabón - controlpl4n3 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:56 JST Jonathan Kamens

     in reply to

     Because this election has two sheets for each ballot, if a voter spoils one sheet of their ballot and needs to redo it, but the other sheet is fine, we need to "spoil" a blank sheet of the other variety from our pile to put into the spoiled ballot envelope with the sheet that the voter spoiled, so that our ballot counts remain correct (we don't want there to be more blanks of one sheet than the other left at the end of the day).
     #pollWorkerTraining

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:57 JST Jonathan Kamens

     in reply to

     If the tabulator says that a ballot is blank or over-voted, we have to give the voter the opportunity to fix the ballot, but if they don't want to, they can feed it back into the tabulator as-is.
     (Sometimes the tabulator says a ballot is blank because the voter didn't fill in the circles properly, and sometimes it's because they didn't want to vote on any of the races on the ballot.)
     #pollWorkerTraining

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 09:48:58 JST Jonathan Kamens

     in reply to

     "We ask that you process absentee ballots when there is a lull."
     Ha! There aren't going to be lulls in November, it's a f'ing presidential election.
     Let's hope they count as many as possible of the absentee and mail-in ballots downtown before election day so we don't have to process them all.
     #pollWorkerTraining