My experience as a Democratic Designated Challenger at

Parma Heights Service Garage, 6184 Pearl Road

11/2/04

Victoria Lovegren

At 6:15 am, “Mr. Inspector” checked my credentials and reluctantly refrained from sending me away. From the beginning, he seemed very defensive about his job responsibilities and about mine. He told me that I was to observe only, and that it was his job to help voters find their precincts.

I was very disturbed by the long lines in Precinct A, considering that the other 6 precincts had virtually no lines (I have a log sheet proving this fact). Furthermore, it was noteworthy that our precinct’s team had a handicapped poll worker and that one of the six voting machines was out of order from the beginning. Precinct A had twice as many registered voters as the other precincts, yet had fewer operating voting machines. In addition the Precinct A team checked in voters more slowly than any of the other precincts. The Board of Elections should know better than to assign the slowest pollworker to the busiest precinct. It was so inefficient, and I wondered if it might be intentional. Surely the Board of Elections knew that Precinct A was much larger than the others. (When I checked the database, I confirmed that Precinct A had twice as many registered voters as did the other precincts).

After several people brought to my attention several environmental conditions in the Service Garage (servicing city earthmoving machines, caterpillar equipment, etc)—lack of fresh air, hot and stuffy, fumes, heaters that were on, fans that were not on, I told Mr. Inspector. In fact, I had several conversations with Mr. Inspector about these issues, and he said he would check them out. Nothing seemed to change, however—the door was not opened and the fans were not turned on. I also asked him if it was possible to utilize some of the underutilized equipment from other precincts. He seemed annoyed and unmotivated to do anything about it. Numerous people made suggestions and recommendations to use voting machines that were standing idle in other precincts in Precinct A. There seemed to be a huge bottleneck in Precinct A. When I relayed these suggestions to Mr. Inspector, he chastised me and told me that the people complaining should bring their complaints directly to him.

At one point, the presiding judge complained that, although she had mentioned to Mr. Inspector that they needed more voting machines, nothing seemed to be happening. She told me that they had a total of 11 voting assemblies, but just needed “stands.” I thought that maybe we could use stands from other underutilized voting machines. When I relayed that information to Mr. Inspector, he sarcastically remarked, “I don’t know what ‘stands’ are,” even after I described that they were the “feet” that held the assembly up. (It was obvious what I meant, yet Mr. Inspector just wanted to be difficult.)

Several times, when there was a line at the check-in desk of people waiting to learn their precinct assignment, or when I saw that a voter was upset about not being “found” on Mr. Inspector’s lists, I came over and offered to look them up into the online database. Mr. Inspector told me that he did not appreciate my doing things that were his responsibility. Nevertheless, I did find people in the database that he could not find. Several other times, I found people that the poll workers could not find. I did this for at least four people, and each of the four people thanked me more than once.

Mr. Inspector, however, was very angry when I offered to help, and told me that I was not to tell people where they should go; that it was HIS job to do that.

Later, when I was trying to appease the voters in Precinct A who were frustrated by the 45 minute wait (while seeing that there were virtually no lines for other precincts), I went around, thanking them for their patience, telling them to be sure to scrape off hanging chads and offering cookies to those who wanted them.

Mr. Inspector was very angry about my passing out cookies and talking to the voters. He told this my supervisor, Ben Ries when he stopped by.

Later, two other Inspectors (Mr. Inspector 2nd and Mr. Inspector 3rd) came on the scene and immediately began to challenge my interactions with the voters, again telling me that I was to observe and challenge. I told them that I was not competing with them, and I just wanted to help streamline the process.

I walked around the polling place regularly, jotting down the number of people in each of the 7 precinct’s lines (I kept a log of the number of people waiting) at various times during the day. People would stop me and ask me questions. One gentleman asked why we couldn’t get more voting machines from the idle precincts’ cache. He went on to tell me that this was his second time in line—that he had already waited in line to vote and was now waiting in line for his wife to vote. (The wait time, for the first 5 hours was about 45 minutes.) His wife was sitting in a chair and was barely able to walk. They were probably in their eighties. I was asking the man in line behind the 80-yr old man if he would mind holding the old man’s spot, when I was approached by one of the new inspectors, Mr. Inspector 2nd, who told me that I was forbidden from talking to the voters and that I should just do my job of observing, and should stay away from the voters. I felt sick that I was being challenged for trying to help the old man. I told him that people asked me questions and that I responded. He told me that I should not be walking around.

Another time, when a voter was taken offline to discuss his voting eligibility, I was standing nearby and moved a few feet closer to listen, thinking that I could consult the online database to see if I could find him. Mr. Inspector 3rd, turned to me and said “May I help you?” in a very demeaning way. I said that I was just trying to make sure that the guy would be able to vote and that I could help look him up. Mr. Inspector 3rd told me that it was not my job. I said “my goal is to make sure everyone gets to vote.” He responded sarcastically with something like “I don’t care about your personal ambitions and goals in life. This is not your job.” Again, I told him that I was only trying to help. Soon, the presiding judge asked us to move our conversation outside because we were disturbing them.

At times, I was flagged down by people who were fanning themselves. They asked if we could turn off the heaters and turn on the fans. Several people asked if a dock door might be cracked to provide better ventilation from the fumes in the service center. Several people told me that they had asthma, and that the fumes bothered them. When I asked Mr. Inspector the status of my earlier requests for more fans and for opening the dock door, he responded with a sharp “no.” I asked why and he told me that it was not my business to worry about the voters and, if they had complaints, to talk to him. (People would have to get out of line to go talk to him.)

Around 3:30 pm, I observed that a voter was having difficulty finding her precinct at the check-in desk and walked over to see if I could help look her up. There was a new Mr. Inspector (#4) there, and I thought maybe he wouldn’t have the hostile reaction to me that the other Mr. Inspectors had. Several other people were in line behind the women who was having problems finding her precinct, and were holding their voter registration cards and looking at me. I looked at their cards, quickly identifying their precincts and pointed them in the right direction. Mr. Inspector 4^th angrily told me to “go sit back down” and not interfere. I said that I was just helping the voters read their precinct information from their cards. He was very hostile, and I knew immediately that the other three Inspectors must have “poisoned” him. I asked him if the others had given him directions to give me a hard time, and he admitted they had. He again told me to go sit down, threatening to call the police if I didn’t. I said I wouldn’t mind if I got arrested because I was not doing anything wrong. He again threatened to call the police and picked up his phone. I walked back and watched him talking on the phone.

I kept thinking about that old man and about all the old people who were coming in with their walkers and waiting for 45 minutes to vote. They really were putting up with a lot of discomfort, and it seemed so unjust to ignore them.