Primary Day

Its 1:57 pm

    Its a crisp cold day but the sun is out and shining. I can hear my tennis shoes calling me for a nice long 30 song walk. Looks like you know what I'll be doing shortly.
Derek Jeter and Ginger are camped out together on our bed buried under our blankets,they must be sensing the snow that we are supposedly getting tomorrow. Going to have wait on that....
  So I signed up to work the presidental primary on 28 Feb here in my city. To be able to work the primary,one is required to attend 2 workshops to be trained. My first one was today at 9 am. I drove down and parked my car in the City Hall lot and went inside and down the stairs to a nice size room.
  Inside was a polling station set up and about 12-15 other folks waiting for the shop to start. Some were new like myself,others were battle tested veterans who know what to expect..
 The city clerk kicked off the meeting and we were introduced to the balloting process. Who knew what all went into a day at the polling station?
  The clerk went to explain how many steps there are in getting a voter through voting and on his/her way. While the city expects the voter turnout for the primary to be light,about the 30% of the registered voters will show,the last Presidental elections had a 88% turnout. Of course you also had a election on a school issue that had only TWO voters show up! And polling places are open from 7 am to 8 pm. That is not counting the other 2.5 hours it takes for the workers to set up and break down the station.
  But what was a smooth class turned into a extra 90 minutes of madness when the clerk started talking about write-in candidates. Now unless you register with a county clerk's office as an official candidate,if you are voted in as a write-in,it simply won't count. The clerk explained that they RARELY see this happen anymore but all of a sudden for the next 90 minutes,that is ALL they talked about. I could see the veterans start to shake their heads in frustration as the same basic questions kept getting asked 15 different ways.
 I had told Lori I would be home in 90 minutes so I could make her lunch for work,instead it turned out to be a 3.5 hour ordeal from hell.
   Our second class is a scheduled 4 hour class on how to use the electronic poll book but based on what I saw today,I'll be bringing a sleeping bag and a pillow. And what makes it worse? It falls on Valentine's Day. Uggh....