I have had the good fortune recently to meet and talk to a Newburyport native who has worked at the voting polls for most of her adult life.
Janet turned 85 last week-end and has decided to retire from her post. She was first appointed to her post at the polls by then City Councilor George Lawler. Back then she worked in the basement of the Currier School where she registered voters and with her fellow poll workers stayed late into the night until all paper ballots were counted.
Until the late 1960’s poll workers stayed at the polling place until all paper ballots were counted. In fact, Janet vividly remembers the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election when poll workers reported for duty at 6:45am on Tuesday, Election Day, voting began at 7am, and the polls closed at 8:30pm.
Janet and her co-workers stayed through the night and finally completed the vote count at 8:30 Wednesday morning. A full 25 hour day…..and no overtime pay.
When Janet began working at the polls, it was mandatory that workers lived within the Ward where they served. There were six (6) poll workers, 3 “R’s” registered Republicans, and 3 “D’s” registered Democrats. And one male warden was required to be in attendance at each polling place. Currently a Newburyport police officer is at every polling precinct.
Janet noted that she has lived in the same house for 50 years, and yet her address has been in 3 wards during that time.
Over the years she has served at polling places inside schools and favored the Bake Sales the parents sponsored on voting days….always good snacks. One year the synagogue served as polling place and the workers mistakenly used the kosher kitchen to cook their lunches, to their great embarrassment.
She also recalls being the subject of a voter’s anger when the voter’s name was repeated as the voter signed in. The voter claimed her privacy was being denied when her name was spoken aloud by the registrar. The ensuing complaints only served to make the entire precinct aware of the voter and her name.
The paper ballots were placed in wooden boxes at the precinct, and the votes were counted in the box. Several of these boxes have been restored and are on display in the Newburyport City Hall Lobby. It’s worth the time to look at them on your next trip to City Hall. “Hanging chads” were a problem in Newburyport long before they became newsworthy for Al Gore in Florida during 2000.
At one time Janet recalls a problem developed reading some of the ballots with these pesky chads, so a decision was made to pack all the ballots up and move to City Hall where the the light and counting space was better suited to counting. On the way from the polls to City Hall, a security person dropped a box with the votes in a puddle during a rain storm.
All the ballots were dried and then counted by hand as the machine was unable to count soggy ballots.
At another election, when electric vote counting machines were introduced, the lights went out when the voting machine was used. After changing the fuses several times, the school custodian discovered that the Coke machine in the teacher’s lounge would blow the fuses when it turned on simultaneous to the voting machine use.
On 9/11/2001, Janet remembers working in the Nock School Library and voting was interrupted until it was determined that schools and public places were safe. Then our voting process carried on.
I’m so grateful to Janet and people like her who quietly and with grace, humor and civic pride serve our community. Like her I feel confident that these traditions will be carried on by today’s young people in one form or another.
However you vote, vote.
Be proud of the hard fought right to do so. And also the peaceful transfer of leadership we enjoy here – that others around the world do not.