With election a week away, board scrambles to cover polls

By JOHN HOWELL
Posted 10/30/18

By JOHN HOWELL So, you haven't got anything special planned other than voting on Nov. 6. If that's the case, Patty Aylesworth, Warwick director of elections, could use your help. Aylesworth needs to fill more than 250 positions - supervisors, greeters,

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With election a week away, board scrambles to cover polls

Posted

So, you haven’t got anything special planned other than voting on Nov. 6.

If that’s the case, Patty Aylesworth, Warwick director of elections, could use your help. Aylesworth needs to fill more than 250 positions – supervisors, greeters, moderators and clerks – to operate the city’s 33 polling locations.

The job pays $150 for the day for supervisors and $200 for clerks and moderators. But as attractive as that may be, Aylesworth finds filling all the slots, and keeping them filled, a moving target.

“It keeps changing,” she said Thursday looking over a sheet of polling locations with names written in pencil. They have to be in pencil because people who signed up drop out and she is left scrambling to find replacements.

She’s heard many reasons for pulling out from ‘My wife is scheduled for surgery that day’ to ‘I can’t do the training,’ ‘You mean I can’t leave during the day?’ to ‘I’m not doing it because my friend said she can’t do it.’

The “no friend” reason was offered by one of the student poll workers. About 20 percent of Warwick poll supervisors are high school students. To be eligible they must be at least 16 years old, be pre-registered to vote, have parental permission and have at least a 2.8 grade point average. Students are paired with older supervisors and check off voters and hand them a ballot after they have been properly identified.

As of last Thursday afternoon, Aylesworth was looking to fill four slots. As of Monday she was one short, but that can all change at a moment’s notice. Applying to be a poll worker is as simple as showing up at the Board of Canvassers office in City Hall. Once the forms have been completed, there’s some training.

That was taking place Thursday afternoon for clerks and moderators in the Warwick Police Community Room. Jennifer Regan from the Rhode Island Board of Elections had command of the room as people sat at long tables following her as she went through the poll worker manual. The training session for moderators and clerks runs two and a half hours. The training is considered as part of the pay for the Election Day job that begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 8 p.m. Poll workers bring their lunch and are required to spend the day at the poll. If they vote at a different poll from where they are working, they need to cast their vote by emergency ballot.

Finding enough workers hasn’t been the only challenge for the Board of Canvassers. With the closing of the Buttonwoods Community Center and schools because of consolidation, the board has had to come up with polling locations. Key considerations are that the poll is within the voting district or close to it, that there’s easy access and that there’s parking.

In the case of Buttonwoods, Aylesworth said, Sts. Rose and Clement will be poll 3524 in Ward 7. Ward 4 voters who voted at Randall Holden School, which is now closed, will vote at Hoxsie School and Ward 2 voters who once voted at Aldrich Junior High will be at Holliman School.

Aylesworth is confident the process will move smoothly, especially with the e-pads now being used for voter identification. The devices reads a driver’s license or other form of identification, doing away with the cumbersome process where supervisors found names in a book and then peeled off labels for each voter. She said the electronic devices have sped up the process.

People who do not have identification matching their registration such as a change in address or name change are asked to fill out an affirmation form and, depending on circumstances, may be directed to the proper voting precinct. Others for whom prior registration can’t be verified at that point can use a provisional ballot. Depending on board verification of the information that ballot will be fully counted, counted only for federal offices (U.S. Senate and Representative in this election) or disqualified.

Apart from processing voters as they arrive at the polls, Aylesworth thinks voting will move along quickly.

“It’s one page,” she said of the ballot, “front and back. It’s not confusing. It’s very straightforward.” State and local candidates are on the front of the ballot. State referendum and the city $40 million school bond is on the back in a yellow box.

Emergency ballots can be obtained up until 4 p.m. on Nov. 5, the day before the election, at the Board of Elections in City Hall.

In ensuring that the city has all the clerks, moderators and supervisors needed for the election, Aylesworth is taking on a job that has been done for years by Dottie McCarthy. Aylesworth said she has a new appreciation for McCarthy.

“I now know why Dottie is crazy,” she said.

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