Many Places Looking for Poll Workers

It's important for people to be involved in the coming midterm elections. Many polling places are looking for poll workers which is a close up way of seeing democracy in action. Democratic headquarters around the country are also looking for volunteers. Check your local Democratic headquarters or county registrar's office to get more information.

Here's Zappini of Daily Kos explaining what it's like to go through training for inspector in Washington state (inspectors are the head people of usually a group of three to five poll workers). Zappini also expresses some skepticism about touch screen voting. I also prefer paper ballots used by optical scanners. If there's a problem, it doesn't take long to count paper ballots by hand and see if the results matches the scanners.

One word of caution for voters. Make sure you're properly registered in the place you live. In the last presidential election, people were assuming they were covered by the new provisional ballot laws in a number of states. Technically, voters are covered but provisional ballots are easy to challenge and they're usually counted several days later, which is not a cool way to operate if it's a close election. Take the time to be sure you're properly registered.