Voting at a Santee elementary was steady and orderly, but poll workers Tuesday still had to metaphorically hold the hands of some voters. Or make some wardrobe adjustments.
There is politics and then there are the rules. A number of voters wearing Donald Trump shirts, masks and socks had to make alterations before entering the voting area, an auditorium at Carlton Hills Elementary School, according to poll worker Kirk Orndorff, a 52-year-old Santee resident.
Orndorff asked them to turn their shirts inside out, turn around a mask or roll down their socks.
One voter was seen turning his Trump shirt into a knot on his chest. A woman put a strip of blue tape over the name Trump on her shirt.
Election rules allow slogans such as “Make America Great Again,” but a candidate’s name would not be displayed within the polling area.
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Then there were the voters who had filled out their ballots but asked, “What do I do now?” (About 30 percent came to drop off ballots; the rest voted in person.)
Orndorff guided them through the licking-the-envelope-and-signing-and-dating-the-outside stage.
They were confused about the voting process, said Orndorff, who reported a big rush from 7 to 9 a.m. and expected another big influx before polls close at 8 p.m.
Other problems that voters needed fixing were mistakenly marking the ballots, using a Sharpie pen that bled through the paper. In those cases, voters were given a clean ballot to start afresh.
“We’ve had a lot of people just come to do ‘do-overs,’” Orndorff said.
The poll worker said the saw a lot of people very concerned about making their votes county.
Some were very nervous about their signature matching theirs on file. He assured them that the match was general and slight changes weren’t something to lose sleep over.
And, of course, voters wanted their “I voted” stickers.
The 235 super polling places took the place of about 1,400 neighborhood polling places. They have more employees (14 instead of four) and four check-in stations instead of one.
Ornforff said he received some ballots from Alameda County and Riverside — which will be forwarded to those locations.
But it’s the sheer numbers that impressed Orndorff.
“What’s been amazing is the number of first-time voters, and we’re not talking about young people,” the poll worker said. “We’re talking about people in their mid-30s, middle-aged. A lot of people are voting in this election, people who haven’t voted in decades.
“That’s been really something about this election — it is bringing people out that probably wouldn’t have come out any other time,” Orndorff continued.
“This election has been a real catalyst. If there is one really good takeaway regardless of what happens with the vote, is the fact that it stimulated the electorate to actually come out and care about it.”
