Thirty-three Down, 1,648 to Go: Alleviating Pennsylvania’s Voting Problems in One Polling Place at a Time
Voter Protections Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 3
June 8, 2007
ON THE GROUND
By M. Aurora Vásquez
She stands at the large glass doors waving her arms at what appears to be a motion sensor above her head. She shifts her weight to her right hip and then her left. Nothing. She stomps her feet slightly. Nada. Peering through the doors into the room with the voting machines, she waves her hands at the poll workers. “I want to vote,” she says. Still nothing. Just then, an elderly lady with a key walks over to the silver box on the wall, and the doors slide open effortlessly; it seems the automatic sliding doors aren’t so “automatic” after all.
The scenario described above is only one of many Election Day faux pas I witnessed during visits to polling sites in Pennsylvania on May 15, 2007. As a voter protection advocate, I know that Pennsylvania poll watchers are partisan by definition and the watchers stand firm by this rule. They are also banned from positioning themselves in front of, next to, or behind the voting machines. But judging from what I saw, some watchers don’t so much care to follow this particular rule. Additionally, while they are not supposed to interfere with the voting process, at least one watcher ignored the rule, forcing the judge of elections to call the cops on him—twice.
“If you don’t have photo ID, you have to vote by provisional ballot,” declared the judge of elections. Two problems: Pennsylvania does not limit voters to a photo ID and, even if the judge had been right, there was no space set up to cast the ballot privately. The latter problem was not surprising; I saw it in nearly every division I visited. But apparently if you can’t convince the voters they have to show photo ID before voting, you can always—as this judge did—fall back on the premise that people with felony convictions cannot vote at all. Wrong again.
The voter approached the table. “Can I see your ID?” asked the judge of elections. The question sounds harmless, unless you know that Pennsylvania only requires first-time voters in the division to show ID. Clearly, without opening up the poll book, this judge knew something about this voter that the rest of us didn’t, or maybe this judge was asking every voter to show ID. It wouldn’t be the first time a judge made that mistake.
Every voting division in Philadelphia has its own judge of elections. There are 1,681 judges; I visited 33. As lead poll workers, the judges are a critical cog in the machine. On May 15, 2007, I spent 13 hours on the streets of Philadelphia. I visited 19 polling places, housing 33 divisions. While no single polling place was plagued with problems that would make your jaw drop, there was something amiss at virtually every stop I made. Yet, there are those who say that the little problems don’t matter much. I know better.
I know that when I happen upon a judge just as s/he is turning away a long-time voter for failure to show ID, many others are about to be—or already have been—erroneously turned away. I know that when a judge is inclined to inform certain voters that people with felony convictions cannot vote, that many potential voters are at risk of not participating due to inaccurate information. I know that a polling place with all its coming and goings, which does not provide private space for provisional ballot voters, violates an important fundamental premise underlying our democracy. Call me crazy, but I think the “small” problems are easily resolved through better poll worker training, more frequent training, more creative training, better preparation, or perhaps a combination of all four.
But it wasn’t all bad news. Last November, I encountered a judge who turned away a long-time voter because he did not have ID. To ensure the voter was allowed to vote that evening, I directed the judge to the ID information in his poll worker training guide and talked with him about the importance of not being overly broad in demanding ID. I also expressed my concern with the lack of accommodations for provisional ballot voters. On May 15, I visited this site again and was pleasantly surprised to find that every division in this polling place had a separate table set up to accommodate provisional ballot voters (now, if we could just get some desk top privacy screens).
And what happened to that judge from last November? Well, as though it were second nature, he relayed the proper ID procedure when I asked how things were progressing. By this fall, I intend to stop by these 19 polling places again to see if the judges remember what we talked about in May. If so, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief knowing I’ve got 33 divisions down and only 1,648 to go.
To learn more about what you can do to help protect Pennsylvania voters, access our voter protection resources at: www.advancementproject.org.
M. Aurora Vásquez is a staff attorney with Advancement Project who coordinates with a Pennsylvania-based local voter protection advocate on year-round activities to protect voters and to ensure fair elections.
