Virginia's huge election day effort

The election numbers are in and they are huge. Not the vote totals, but the numbers it takes to put on an election in Virginia:

• 2,400 polling places


• 10,600 pieces of equipment


• 30,000 election officers

And those are just the numbers for Election Day from Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the State Board of Elections.

The work for tomorrow's presidential election started months ago and gets more hectic as the vote draws nearer. Many registrars were working 14-hour days last week to handle the surge of absentee voting, which ended Saturday.

A volunteer-staffed call center at the state Board of Elections had taken calls from more than 240,000 people since Sept. 17, at a pace that reached 12,000 phone calls a day last week. It's open again today and tomorrow at (804) 864-8901.

Such a historic effort might be expected for such a historic election, when either the first black president or the first woman vice president will be elected.

Every election, though, requires a lot of effort.

"We're taking the same exact steps that we normally do, we're just doing it bigger in all respects," said J. Kirk Showalter, Richmond registrar. "Whether you have a teensy-tinsy election or one like this, you have to go through the exact same steps."

Voters must be registered. Nearly a thousand different ballots must be prepared to get the right combination of contests for each precinct. Voting machines must be checked and rechecked. Then the machines must be sealed and locked in a metal cage, not to be opened until Election Day.

Voting-machine technicians started delivering the voting-machine cages to polling places last week, a task they will finish today.

Tomorrow, poll workers will arrive at 5 a.m. to be sworn in as officers of election. The chief of election will unlock the voting-machine cage, break the seals and set up the voting booths before the precincts open at 6 a.m. Workers will stay until the polls close at 7 p.m., the votes have been counted and the voting machines have been dismantled and locked.

They could easily have a 15-hour day, and if they want to eat, they'll have to bring the food themselves. Experienced poll workers sometimes organize a potluck meal for the precinct to share. Others are lucky enough to be assigned someplace such as Henrico County's Lakewood Manor, which provides cafeteria meal tickets for the poll workers.

Expecting the unexpected is a big part of the job for everyone involved.

"We have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and Plan D," Rodrigues said. "Should we lose power at the state Board of Elections, we have generators, we have flashlights and we have a fire truck on standby."

Chesterfield County Registrar Lawrence C. Haake III has been dealing with contingencies for weeks.

"You make a plan, and one morning you come in and there's water leaking in the room where the voting machines are stored. You go in the water-leak fixing business," he said.

"You realize that daylight saving time ends on Sunday and you don't have good lighting at one precinct, and you become a light-fixing person.

"You ordered canvas bags for the ballots and none of the zippers work, and you had to send those back.

"All of that actually happened this year."

The worst thing on Election Day is telling someone that he or she can't vote, said Raymond Cady, 39, who's chief of elections at Lakewood Manor.

"A person arrives at 7:01 and the law states that polls close at 7 p.m. To have to tell them that they can't vote, when they're pleading with you to let them in the door, that is a crushing feeling. The law says it. I'm just the messenger."

This year, poll workers also will have to enforce a ban on electioneering at the polls by making sure people don't wear political gear within a 40-foot barrier.

"We'll have a greeter who will instruct them in a nice, polite way that you have to take your hat off or turn your T-shirt inside out," Cady said. "Once again, we are the messenger. I hope people will be civil about it."

To encourage and prepare for the record-breaking numbers expected tomorrow, the state board brought in extra help.

In July, 18 corporations signed on for a campaign called Ensure the Vote. They helped set up a call center to answer questions and helped recruit 10,000 new officers of election. State Farm Insurance alone is responsible for more than 1,000 new officers of election, said Susan Lee, the state board's election-uniformity manager.

LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. supplied 70 volunteers to answer phones last week at the call center. Altria Group has 60 volunteers working there this week.

Poll workers are paid on Election Day, but money usually isn't the motivator. They get a stipend of $75 to $200, depending on their duties.

"I do it for civic reasons," said Cady, who has been working the polls for 10 years. "I majored in political science. It's my duty not only to vote but to make sure that other people get to vote."

Cady is a newcomer compared to Emogene Elswick. She has been a poll worker for five decades at the rural Bull precinct in Buchanan County in Southwest Virginia.

"I love it, I absolutely love it," said Elswick, who will soon celebrate her 78th birthday. "Sometimes that's the only time of year I get to see some people."

Elswick, who lives in the isolated mountain community of Maxie, recalled that it was her father-in-law who, in 1951, got her interested in elections. "When I got married -- you had to be 21 to get married back then -- the first thing my father-in-law did was take me to this holler down here to a little old man and get me registered to vote."

Elswick is one of Buchanan's oldest names, and the family had been involved in county politics for generations. Elswick said her mother-in-law was a poll worker, so a few years after her marriage into the family, she volunteered to work the polls as well. She hasn't missed an election -- local, special, primary or general -- in 40 years, she said. When her mother-in-law retired as precinct chief years ago, she stepped into the job.

Jim Heilman, a former Albemarle County registrar and now a poll worker, has been working voting booths for more than 20 years.

His observations on the changes over those two decades, beginning in 1987, are succinct. Voting booths are different. Interest in voting has gone up. It's easier to vote.

But one thing has not changed, he said. People who register to vote via mail have the worst handwriting in the world.

"You can't read their handwriting. You can't read their last name. You can't read their Social Security number. You can't imagine the forms people send in,'' he said.

But Heilman, whose first presidential election as registrar in 1988 pitted Michael Dukakis against George H.W. Bush, said this presidential election is "off the charts in interest. We're so inundated. We have four phones here ringing off the hook all the time."

"It is definitely more than your average election," agreed Anne Marie Middlesworth, deputy registrar in Henrico County. "All presidential elections are busy, and there's always excitement, but this is definitely very, very busy."

Contact staff writer Katherine Calos at kcalos@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6433.

Staff writers Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos contributed to this report.