Polling Place Vacant of Voters
The not-so good experience of calling in polling results.
Audrey Mangini
Issue date: 11/10/08 Section: Election night
The three polling places at 24 Eagle St., Albany's City Hall, were vacant of voters with 20 minutes left to vote Tuesday.
A republican and democrat volunteer was stationed at each machine for each district, and a representative from the Albany Board of Elections was overseeing everything.
The democrats were very open about their hopes for the outcome of the election, which was how they were easily distinguished from the republicans.
"Obama won Pennsylvania!" one of them exclaimed as she ran back into the polling place from a near by room with a television. She began to dance around the tables repeating the sentence over and over, bumping into tables and chairs, clearly annoying some of the other people in the room.
As nine o'clock crept closer the poll watchers grew eager to finally close. With one minute left until nine, it grew quiet as many of them looked down at their watches.
When the clock finally hit nine, the volunteers started to count the results, and locking the machines. The volunteers filled out the appropriate sheets with the results, double and triple checking them, a police officer lingered in the room, pacing back and forth.
I then recorded the results on the correct sheet in preparation for them to be called in. As I finished with the last district, Times Union reporter, Tim O'Brien, looked at the sheets I had copied to get the results for his news story.
I didn't get through to call-in the results until 10:20 p.m.. An irritated woman answered the phone. She was barely audible as she asked me what district I had. The screaming and talking in the background made it very difficult to hear what she was asking of me, and vice versa.
After the woman recorded the first district, she tried to hang-up, even though I had informed her I had three to report. After the second district was recorded, she again tried to hang up. Finally, after 11 minutes on the phone with this woman, we could hang-up from the unpleasant phone call.
A republican and democrat volunteer was stationed at each machine for each district, and a representative from the Albany Board of Elections was overseeing everything.
The democrats were very open about their hopes for the outcome of the election, which was how they were easily distinguished from the republicans.
"Obama won Pennsylvania!" one of them exclaimed as she ran back into the polling place from a near by room with a television. She began to dance around the tables repeating the sentence over and over, bumping into tables and chairs, clearly annoying some of the other people in the room.
As nine o'clock crept closer the poll watchers grew eager to finally close. With one minute left until nine, it grew quiet as many of them looked down at their watches.
When the clock finally hit nine, the volunteers started to count the results, and locking the machines. The volunteers filled out the appropriate sheets with the results, double and triple checking them, a police officer lingered in the room, pacing back and forth.
I then recorded the results on the correct sheet in preparation for them to be called in. As I finished with the last district, Times Union reporter, Tim O'Brien, looked at the sheets I had copied to get the results for his news story.
I didn't get through to call-in the results until 10:20 p.m.. An irritated woman answered the phone. She was barely audible as she asked me what district I had. The screaming and talking in the background made it very difficult to hear what she was asking of me, and vice versa.
After the woman recorded the first district, she tried to hang-up, even though I had informed her I had three to report. After the second district was recorded, she again tried to hang up. Finally, after 11 minutes on the phone with this woman, we could hang-up from the unpleasant phone call.
Be the first to comment on this story