Primary Election

I have the "honor" of being an election inspector in our town. In other words, I was one of the few they could get to agree to do it. Actually our pay went up this year to $8 an hour for our 10 hour day but that didn't seem to entice any more interest in the job.

It was an exciting day!!! We had 39 voters (including the 4 election inspectors) - 22 Democrats & 17 Republicans in case you're interested. Let's see... it took, at the most, one minute to vote so that left 561 minutes to fill. Admittedly we WERE somewhat busy for the first 20 minutes setting up the voting machine and posting signs like the one above (I guess BIG type makes it understandable) and filling out some paperwork. And then there's 20 minutes at the end when we do everything in reverse. But that still leaves 521 minutes.

So what DO we do? Catch each other up on the latest happenings in the town. Try to engage EVERYONE who comes in in conversation - if we're successful that kills a few more minutes. I taught another inspector how to work sudoko puzzles and how to work a mechanical pencil (that's a biggie!). Crossword puzzles. Read the one paper someone brought. I had fortunately picked up the mail on the way so had an LL Bean catalog & a Yankee magazine. I did remember to bring my knitting. We snacked. Gone are the good old days when voters brought in lots of goodies for us to eat. But we made it through the day, "felt good" about doing our civic duty & went home "looking forward" to election day in November.