The Hoboken Tax Reform Coalition
Experiences of Poll Volunteers
In June I volunteered to work at a polling station as a challenger on behalf of a candidate. I wonder what experiences others who have volunteered to work at the polls as challengers observed in the past?
The following is something that I witnessed and found interesting. I was stationed at the Demarest School and I witnessed an amazing example of Hoboken politics. I watched as a young woman explained to the poll workers that she had very recently moved from an apartment in an area where she used to vote at Demarest to a new place up town. She got in line at the table to sign in to vote and was told that she was not in the books. Apparently her change of address was recorded in time and her voter registration was probably already at her new polling place uptown. She was told that she could either go to that polling district to vote or fill out a provisional ballot at the Demarest school.
She was very distraught and said that she as a Hoboken teacher and "they" would be mad if she didn't get her vote in and she would get in "trouble". It was after 7:30 but she made the decision to hurry to the uptown voting location I assume that the "they" she was talking about was the teacher's union..but I do not know for sure and this is just my assumption.
It's typical to have Unions support a canidate and ask the membership to support them but I thought it was sad to see how upset the young woman was when she thought she might not get her vote and could get in trouble.
What have others seen?
The following is something that I witnessed and found interesting. I was stationed at the Demarest School and I witnessed an amazing example of Hoboken politics. I watched as a young woman explained to the poll workers that she had very recently moved from an apartment in an area where she used to vote at Demarest to a new place up town. She got in line at the table to sign in to vote and was told that she was not in the books. Apparently her change of address was recorded in time and her voter registration was probably already at her new polling place uptown. She was told that she could either go to that polling district to vote or fill out a provisional ballot at the Demarest school.
She was very distraught and said that she as a Hoboken teacher and "they" would be mad if she didn't get her vote in and she would get in "trouble". It was after 7:30 but she made the decision to hurry to the uptown voting location I assume that the "they" she was talking about was the teacher's union..but I do not know for sure and this is just my assumption.
It's typical to have Unions support a canidate and ask the membership to support them but I thought it was sad to see how upset the young woman was when she thought she might not get her vote and could get in trouble.
What have others seen?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by FAP on -
Frankly I'm shocked the poll worker knew they should offer a provisional ballot. Many, if not most, don't in my experience.
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Permalink Reply by Colin on
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I worked the 4-2 and 4-3 this past election. At the end of the night on the 4-3 side of the room a woman was reading the machine results off to the challengers that were present. She said, "Oh this sucks, the b*tch won" and then told us Dawn Zimmer had 130 votes on that machine compared to Mason's 111 and Raia's 89. I don't care what her personal politics are or preferred candidate is but she needs to leave those at the door if she is going to be a poll worker
That being said the people who worked the 4-2 were very nice though and very professional.
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Permalink Reply by David on
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I volunteered in June in Marineview, the municipal unions were out in force for Cammarano, I was there the whole shift, and there were people whose close relatives were Hoboken police officers, retired police officers, at least two active officers, a school teacher and relatives. I think there must have been a dozen people challenging over the course of the day, which comes close to $900 spent on challengers at that one polling location alone. The other notable challenger that showed up was Terry Castellano, I was please to see that some of the other challengers were uncomfortable with Peter's last minute Russo alliance.
The school teacher bothered me a lot because she stated that if the new BOE tried to change the way things run, the teachers would let the kids get bad scores and parents would blame the BOE. She clarified that the teachers would stop putting in as much effort, but it left a very bad taste in my mouth. I said bad teachers should be fired,and her response was 'thats not how it works.' Sad but true.
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