polling assistant-ing

Last weekend I had the pleasure of working at a polling place for the federal election. It was not without issues in gaining employment in the first place. The AEC seem to ignore their web applications. It was only after some eavesdropping, round-about thinking aloud from co-workers and other weird human interaction that I was verbally prodded into following up my application by telephone. To my delight the AEC was both eager and desperate sounding on the phone and promised me a call back later that evening. This was on a Thursday.
On Friday I received an email telling me to do the online course. It goes through all you need to know but won't remember. There's a 1% pass rate required on the quizzes.
Saturday was when it all happened. The officer in charge, OIC, gave me the role of ballot box guard. It sounds quite alright but in reality it's not that interesting. It mainly involved making suggestions to people about which box to put their ballot papers in. One fellow didn't take kindly to my suggested, retorting that he'd been doing it for 70 years already. It was reasonably straightforward except that some people decided to fold the House of Representatives paper into the Senate paper.
It took until around 1PM for the queues to die out. After lunch I had a stint as ordinary issuing officer - just the regular name marker person. It does require marginally more knowledge and more brain-sapping interaction. Although it was quiet when I got into it and so I went to sharpen some pencils and clean out the booths. I really wouldn't mind the job of 2IC - it seems like a position where you can jump in to relieve people while holding experience and knowledge but not so much that you're flooded with paperwork like the OIC.

Days like this also provide an opportunity to see the whole spectrum of the community. But firstly, I did happen to make myself known to my granduncle and his mob. The generation+1 members didn’t recognise me at first but ran back in five minutes after putting in their ballot papers to confirm my identity. This is one of those days where people who ordinarily wouldn’t be seen in public with their parents are caught doing exactly that. It was notable that white male Asian female couples tended to be older and not always arriving together and almost certainly without the children being present. Asian male white female couples tended to be younger and with kids in tow, or rather man happily pushing stroller. The kids from a darker man with curly hair (possibly West Indies) and Asian female were absolutely adorable. “I voted” stickers turned out to be an absolute winner with the kids, but not so much with the adults. That is, except for a group of mid-twenties dark-dressing group of four (Goth or something?) who were thrilled to be offered a whole roll of stickers.

By the close of polling I had managed to stuff down two meals in a space of four hours. A class of 2006 MHS dude joined the crew and we developed an effective way of sorting Senate papers. Well, at least much more effective than the others. I think the 2IC was impressed, especially with the gravity-assisted compact temporary storage. There’s still a place for time and management studies and it would be rather cool to implement it in the next election.

Party-appointed scruntineers turned out to be much more well-mannered than the OIC and my work manager made them out to be. In fact, everyone was really nice! An old lady said that to me in the morning after I bode her a good day as she walked past the ballot box. I thought the OIC didn’t have to be that nice – there were plenty of things that would have ticked me off. Mainly ignorant questions.

All up it was quite a worthwhile experience. Recommended. 10/10