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Show The Emery County Review, Tuesday, November 11, 2008 VIEWPOINT A7 Opinion and Letters to the Editor My View On Being an Election Judge C. Josie Luke When I registered to vote earlier in the year in time for the primary elections, I made a choice I ended up questioning later on. A well meaning county employee asked me if I would serve as an election judge, and being a rather naive person, considering doing such a thing to be my patriotic duty, I said yes. Though I received no call to serve during the primary election, in late September this well meaning employee asked me if I still wanted to help out. Possibly I should have suspected something from the fact that she asked again rather than just instructing me on where to be at what time, but my patriotism, and possibly guilt at disappointing this employee, caused me to respond affirmatively. Then I received a letter inviting me to a training session in October. Though I didn’t respond to the letter as I was asked to—maybe subconsciously I was beginning to suspect a trap, or maybe it’s just that I am often irresponsible—the county employee asked me if I was coming, and again I said yes. The training was not difficult. The voting machine was like a simple version of an online college exam, there were really nice people there who complimented my writing, and they served fruit with dip. It was just a rather simple way to get out of working for a few hours. But there were also hints of what might be coming. For one, I was a little out of place. Though I really liked those with whom I attended the training, it was difficult not to notice that most of those who attended could be my parents if not my grandparents. The other hint came when a fellow judge told me in no uncertain terms that our goal was to “stay out of the paper!” Now, what fun would it be if I couldn’t at least write about it! (As I sit here writing, I am fully expecting a few phone calls once this is published.) The final, rather obvious hint should have been the horrifyingly awful time I had to be at the polling place—6 a.m. Still, I thought it might be a fun experience. So the night before I planned on going to bed at a very early hour, hoping that it might be easier to get up in the morning. But though I had good intentions, I still only managed about four and a half hours sleep that night and was 10 minutes late the next morning. Making it worse was the fact that all five of the other judges were on time! For all I know, they were probably early just to see what time I’d manage to get out of bed. That morning we had our first attempted voter enter the Huntington City Hall at 6:30 a.m. They had to send him away. I thought that there might just be one of them, but at 6:45 they began appearing; first just a few, and then a few grew to many, forming our first line. This excited me, but it made the more experienced judges nervous. As we set up for the 14 hour day ahead of us, I was given the job of programming the cards that make the ballots appear “magically” on the voting touch screen. Though at first this seemed ideal-- after all, the job was easy-- it also became slightly menial. The other two judges in my precinct didn’t have difficult jobs either; they just signed people in to vote; or at least that’s what I thought. The line grew to 15 before we could officially allow them to vote and stayed that way for the first hour. In fact, the morning was quite busy with those who wanted to get it out of the way, and those who had to work later. It then dropped off for a little while before picking up again. Oddly, at least to me, the lunch hour proved to be possibly the slowest time of the day. I figured that people would take the chance to vote during their lunch break, but that is probably what those who stayed away feared too. Though the lines had not yet reached their maximum, you could have fooled me by the stress my fellow judges seemed to be under. They were so set on not making a mistake (and not being in the newspaper) that I felt like they would fragment if the numbers were off. They thought they might be off a couple of times, and I was secretly intrigued by what would happen if they were. Maybe they knew what was coming and felt the need to keep the stress level high so that later in the day they wouldn’t have to adjust their heightened level. I also found that there was a bit of competitiveness between the two precincts in the city hall. Though it was never extremely hostile, the ladies managed to provide me with real-life examples of passive-aggressive behavior. I had learned of this phenomenon in my psychology courses, but the day proved to be chock full of such amazing case studies. I was probably quite a case-study myself, miraculously staying quite energetic throughout the day. I was also constantly excited by the numbers of people who were coming in to vote. In fact, I often made my fellow judges report the numbers to me so I could divide and find out the percentage of registered voters who had voted during the day. The afternoon proved to be fairly steady, but it was not until approximately 4:30 p.m. that the really long lines began to form. It was then that I was grateful for those ladies who had been through such a circumstance before. All that was required of me was to push the card into the card programmer, press a button, and hand the programmed card along with an “I voted” sticker to each person who went through our line. I also took on the job of encouraging those in the line to be friendly, occasionally requesting, “Will ya’ll move as close together as you can?” When I did not do so promptly, my judging leader quietly prompted, “Will you do it again?” The line stayed quite long until about 30 minutes before the polls were set to close, but we still had excited citizens strolling in until we were forced to close promptly at 8 p.m. I left 20 minutes later, pleased that we hadn’t made a mistake, and exhausted from the long day. Though I will admit my day as an election judge was not the most exciting or “fun” day I have ever had, I did not make a mistake in agreeing to take part in one of the most patriotic and empowering events we have in our country. I learned respect for my new stressed out friends, and I was proud as I calculated those percentages, realizing that over 70 percent of those who were registered to vote took advantage of their right as citizens of this country. It made me less cynical, and it made me proud to live in a place where I can have a say in what happens in my country. Hopefully, I’ll be there again next year. A Letter to the Readers An Opinion Not His Own Established January 2, 2007 James L. Davis, Publisher & Editor w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w Colleen A. Davis, Co-Publisher, Office & Advertising Manager Josie Luke, Assistant Editor Lyndsay Reid, Advertising Design Kathy P. Ockey, Staff Journalist Casey Wood, Webmaster Our Vision To be a valued member of the communities we serve and to be trusted as an honest, truthful and reliable source of news. w w w Our Mission To inform, entertain and provide a public forum for the discussion of events impacting the people of the Emery County area and to inform with news and features relevant to those who call the Castle Valley area home w w w Our Principles We will be ethical in all of our efforts to provide information to the public. We will be unbiased in our reporting and will report the facts as we see them and do our best to focus on the good news of the county, its people, history and way of life. We will be strong and active members of the community and assist in any way that we are able. We will strive to provide the best quality product possible to our readers and advertisers...always. We will verify the details of news we are reporting and if a mistake is made on our part we will correct it immediately. We will always listen to suggestions on how to do our job better. Editorial Submission Guidelines The Emery County Review welcomes and invites letters to the editor and guest opinion articles on public policy or current events. We welcome letters of thanks to individuals who have helped make our community a better place to live, work and play. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit all submissions for space constraints, clarity and errors in fact. Submissions must include author’s name and contact information. Contact information will not be published. Letter’s and opinion articles can be sent to jldavis@theemerycountyreview.com, mailed to The Emery County Review, P.O. Box 487, Orangeville, UT. 84537 or faxed to 435-748-2543. The opinion page has always been my favorite of any newspaper. I enjoy reading how people feel about particular issues and for that reason the letter to the editor section of the opinion page is often the first place I turn. Like most newspapers, The Emery County Review has editorial guidelines for letters to the editor. The first, and most important, is that no anonymous letters will be published in the newspaper. If you have an opinion, you are free to express it within the pages of this newspaper as long as it meets a few other editorial requirements, namely, that it focuses on pub- lic policy or current events and does not attack or criticize a private individual. We also require that letters be written about local issues or are opinions of local citizens about national or regional issues. Lastly, we require that letters contain contact information from the author. Last week a letter to the editor was published in The Emery County Review that I thought met all of the requirements mentioned above. But after publication I was contacted by Ben Johnson of Huntington and informed that the letter to the editor with his name as the author was not a letter penned by him. The unknown author had used and signed his name when submitting the letter. While I had verified that there was a Ben Johnson in Huntington, I had not called Mr. Johnson to discuss his letter before publishing it, an error on my part that will not be repeated. While I have from time to time received anonymous letters to the editor, I have never before received a letter to the editor where the author had forged someone else’s signature. I had assumed that anyone who felt strongly enough about an issue to write a letter would have character enough not to assign that opinion to someone else. I apologize to Mr. Johnson for his name being attached to an opinion that was not his. not write this article and really don’t know anything about the Old Mill in Huntington. I am concerned that someone would use my name to express their opinion on this subject. I think our elected people are doing a great job for our city. I knew nothing about this article and feel bad that someone would use my name. If I want to express an opinion, I’ll do it. I don’t need someone using my name. - James L. Davis Editor Readers’ Forum Not My Opinion It was brought to my attention a Letter to the Editor appeared in The Emery County Review on Nov. 4, which I was supposed to have written. It was entitled, “Double Standards.” I want to make it clear I did Viewpoint - Ben Johnson Huntington |
