New York Dolls – "Personality Crisis" (1973)

And you’re a prima ballerina

On a spring afternoon

Regular readers of 2 or 3 lines know me as the brains behind this wildly popular blog.

But I am also an accomplished trivia player, a prolific reader, a skilled keyboard player, a cool-headed basketball referee, a long-distance bicyclist – it’s nothing for me to ride 10 or 12 miles in a single day! – a renowned advertising and marketing attorney (now retired), and a model grandparent to no fewer than nine young grandchildren.

I’m pleased to say that we can now add one more item to that long list of accomplishments: best election judge ever!

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The People’s Republic of Maryland recently held a very successful primary election, thanks in large part to my remarkable performance as a rookie election judge.

Serving as an election judge in my home county is a Bataan-Death-March-like ordeal.  Judges must appear at their assigned precincts at 6:00 AM (one hour before the polls officially open) and work until 9:00 PM (one hour after the polls close). 

Judges aren’t allowed to leave their polling places during their 15-hour shift – you bring your own food and hope you get a chance to gobble it down when things aren’t too busy.  

Cell phones?  Fuhgeddaboutit!  Judges are supposed to leave them at home on election day, which I did.  No chance I was going to risk incurring the wrath of the two women who served as chief judges at my precinct.  (One was an ex-Marine drill sergeant, and the other a retired prison guard.)

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Maryland pays its election judges the princely sum of $250 a day.  That works out to $16.65 an hour – which is similar to what a Walmart greeter makes.  (I spend more than that on a typical first date – and I have a lot of first dates.)

Clearly it wasn’t the money that motivated me to serve as an election judge.  I did it to serve the cause of democracy in my de facto one-party state.  (I’m not exaggerating when I say that – the governor, US Senators, Congressman, attorney general, state senator, state representatives, and every other local and state elected official where I live are members of the same party.)

I also did it in hopes that I could turn the experience into a good 2 or 3 lines post.  (As my regular readers know, I’ve been phoning it in recently – I’m not getting a lot of help from my muse these days.)

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Based on my experience on Tuesday, success as an election judge comes down to four things.

First, stay busy!  Don’t sit on your ass and wait to be told what to do by the chief judges.  There’s a lot of donkey work to do at an election, and you shouldn’t view any task as beneath you.  (As a rookie, I really didn’t know how to help with the various ballot-verifying and security measures.  But I could fold up chairs and tables and carry them to the storage room – you don’t need to wait for a chief judge to tell you that needs to be done.)

Second, be friendly.  Some voters are a little nervous about the whole process, but a warm smile and eagerness to be helpful usually puts them as ease.  (I think I went above and beyond mere politeness.  For example, when a mother with a couple of small children approached the voting machine I was manning, I immediately pulled up two extra chairs for the kids to sit in while mom voted.)

Third, don’t be too friendly.  Most voters just want to get the process over quickly so they get out and take care of their other business.  There’s no need to share your life story or tell them a joke – the judge’s relationship with the voter is a business one, after all.  

Finally, always act in a strictly neutral fashion.  Don’t even think about making a comment about any of the candidates!  Also, election judges in the primary election have to know which party each voter is a member of in order to give them the correct ballot.  If you are a strong partisan of one party or the other, you might be tempted to give a little wink to those who belong to your party, or give a cold shoulder to members of the enemy party.  DON’T DO IT!

Unlike most online retailers, our county’s Board of Elections doesn’t survey voters about their customer experience.  But if they did, I’m confident that I would score at least a 4.9 out of 5.0.

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Will I serve as an election judge for the general election in November?  I’m not sure.

My dogs were barkin’ pretty loud when I was released from duty at the end of the primary – despite never leaving the confines of the school cafeteria that served as my polling place, I logged over 10,000 steps.  It was almost as hard for me to get out of bed and get going the next morning as it had been a couple of weeks ago when I rode 39.1 miles on the first day of a group bicycle trip.

On the other hand, judges who have served before get a $100 bump in pay when they serve in a subsequent election.  That would cover the cost of a second bottle of wine on a first date – and sometimes a fellow needs all the help he can get.

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I don’t write posts about elections very often.  When I do, I usually feature Alice Cooper’s “Elected,” which is not only an appropriate accompaniment for such a post but also a great record.

But I used “Elected” in the previous 2 or 3 lines, which was also about the recent Maryland primary election.  (You can click here to read that post.)

So I’m featuring one of my favorite New York Dolls tracks instead – even though it really has nothing to do with the subject of this post.

Click here to hear “Personality Crisis.”

Click here to buy the recording from Amazon.