DeGrazia cross-stitch

 

County clerk held election training today.  She is holding multiple sessions and the one I and neighbor Anita attended was completely filled.  Part of the reason is there are some new clerks so they need the training.  Part of the reason is this will be the first time many of the towns will be using the new tabulator machines.  Then there is the fact that our state's legislature seems to revel in changing election laws just prior to elections.  (Go figure.)  The new ban on drop boxes for returning absentee ballots doesn't affect us since we don't have them.  However the new ruling goes further to even preclude anyone even picking up a family member or neighbor's absentee ballot and delivering it to the clerk.  I sent a card to a friend last month that took two weeks to arrive so mailing your absentee ballot is becoming an iffy option.  Then we heard that the Republican Party 'won' our county in the last election.  We all questioningly looked at each other.  Turns out that means that the Republican Party can submit a list of potential poll workers to a municipality and greater than half of the poll workers for that municipality need to be taken from the list.  The Democratic Party can also submit a list but the people picked by the municipality for poll workers from that list have to be less than the number picked from the Republican Party list.   I'd heard of these lists in the more populated counties in the southern part of the state but never in our area and I certainly didn't know the rules surrounding them.  A few of our municipalities had received a list from the Republican Party (the Democratic Party hadn't sent any lists).  I have no idea the rational behind such a rule and it seems totally bizarre that the political parties would have anything to say about the running of a municipality's election.  After that the meeting went on going over the myriads of paperwork required before and after an election.  I'm pretty sure anyone who has ever worked as a poll worker would realize how difficult it would be to cheat on an election.