Inside Elections

Election Day is exactly one week from today, and we’re putting on the finishing touches. Part of that means making sure that all of our helpers – not just poll workers – are trained and at the ready.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been busy training and re-training our field technicians, who will be well-versed in the technical aspects of our electronic voting machines. Each is assigned just a handful of our 448 precincts to make sure the eSlates are in good working order at the polls throughout Election Day, and to resolve things when they aren’t.

We’ve significantly beefed up our ranks of field techs from the Nov. 6 Consolidated Municipal, School and Special District Election, when we had just 52. Now we have 79. And to partner with each field tech are 79 ride-along coordinators, who will take and log calls for assistance and manage all the paperwork. They’ve been in training too.

Between them, our more than 2,000 poll workers, and our poll-opening-and-closing technicians who lend an extra hand in the morning and evening, we’ve got more than 2,200 citizens who will be working in the trenches on Election Day. But we still need more! So sign up to help us – and get paid for doing it – today!

About half of our field techs and ride-along coordinators are returning from November for a repeat performance; the other half are newbies. Many of our newbies were drawn from the friend pools and families of our returnees. Who said being a field tech can’t be a family affair? 

Hillary O’Connor, who is in charge of field techs and ride-along coordinators, said that training has been going well, with an emphasis on problems experienced in the November election. The five hours of training for field technicians has covered everything from setting up and taking down the eSlates to troubleshooting likely scenarios.

“Students really seem to enjoy the troubleshooting portion where we have them leave the room and then we overload their machines with problem after problem,” O’Connor said.

Hey, nothing like being over-prepared, right?

In November, we trailed Matt and Shirley Chidester, a field technician and ride-along coordinator team (and husband and wife) on Election Day to get a sense of what this field tech thing is all about. Read more about it to brush up on all the critical work that field techs do.