Hi Booko. The Supreme Court's recent decision upholding one version of the law reminded me to follow up with your opinion, if you don't mind sharing any perspective you gained 11/6. Thanks!
As it turns out, we had an election on Super Tuesday when the law was in force (and will have another in July).
We didn't have any problems over it. Oh sure, we had a couple of smartarsed voters, but you know, you just have to suck it up and be professional about that.
We also put the sweetest 90 year old lady on the ID check table, and that seems to keep people from getting stupid too.
The law is a little bit confusing about what IDs are acceptable, because we can take an expired out of state driver's licence but not an in state one (unless I have that backwards...I *always* look at the doc to make sure I've got that right.)
We can take gov't IDs, which includes state unis but not private ones, so just because something is a uni ID doesn't mean we can use it.
We didn't hear any complaints from anyone about anyone not being able to vote though, and we have a LOT of immigrants in my area, and we keep seeing more and more show up at our polls as they become citizens.
The real serious problem at our poll is language barrier, and when I'm retrained next month I intend to ask those in charge what our options are to see that voters can manage to work the machines and vote.
Our new Asian voters aren't a problem so far...they've always brought in a child to translate for them, which is fine.
It's a couple of Latino voters that came in by themselves that had difficulty. They were first time voters, having just become citizens I guess. . They had proper ID and were on the rolls, so no problem there. They just didn't even speak enough English to fill out the Voter's Certificate, much less figure out how to work the computer voting machines.
The thing is, as poll workers we have some limitations on just how involved we can be in assisting voters in doing the paperwork and I need to get clarification on that. I need to know to what extent I as a poll worker can assist a voter. I mean if someone's blind or illiterate we can assist them. If someone doesn't speak English, uh...we are limited? How is that not some form of literacy test?
If someone who speaks Spanish happens to be in the room, another voter, or the cafeteria worker or whatever, *they* can assist the voter. But there may not be anyone there.
If in fact state law does not allow us to assist in some way, come this fall it could be a very real problem. I want to know what latitude I have to contact the local Latino organization near me and see if they can find a volunteer to hang out on voting day to help anyone who needs it, if we are legally unable to do so.
