Cleaning up under the bird feeders

Bopped down to the Town Hall this morning for the Public Test of the voting machine.  We need to test the machine to make sure the ballot is loaded correctly.  Then we mark up some ballots and throw them through the machine and check what the tally is to make sure it's registering correctly.    That test is open to the public if they want to watch but in all of the year's I've been here we've never had anyone come.  Sometimes people do show up for other reasons.  Treasurer Michelle walked in during the test.  It's the end of collecting property taxes and she has a lot of paperwork to do.  She still found time to fill out a ballot for us.  She filled in the second circle on the ballot because she liked the name.  She doesn't know the candidates nor does she live in their district.  Chief Inspector Andy took note and asked how people will know there even is an election.  He's the fourth person in the last 48 hours to ask me the same question.  There is only one county board seat on the ballot in a district covering parts of six towns.  A sample ballot and a notice of the Public Tests was in this week's newspaper.  I assume a short writeup of the three candidates along with a notice of polling place addresses plus the hours they will be open will be next week's newspaper.  Other than that I don't know how people will know to vote.   There will be some people who come in to vote just because they see the flag is out on the town hall.    The County only put the names of voters in the poll book that live in the contested district.  Our poll books this time have 6 double sided pages - some w/ just a name or two on a page.  We will know who can/can not vote in this election even if a voter isn't sure.  The County Clerk's new aide may have printed the poll books because the backside of each page is printed upside down.  I noticed this irregularity during the Public Test but Andy and I figured w/ such a small number of voters we wouldn't insist the County Clerk's office print new poll books for us.