Reprinted from The Berkshirte Eagle, November 4, 2024.
Used with permission.

The hand-counted paper ballot is considered the gold standard among poll watchers. While it's labor intensive, time consuming and inefficient, it's still being used in Sandisfield and several other towns in Berkshire County and beyond.

And it has Town Clerk Douglas Miner concerned. He expects to see at least 550 ballots, possibly the most the town's handcranked gun-metal gray ballot box has ever held. Before the election, Miner held an hour-long training to prepare poll workers for the consequential night.

With 703 registered voters in Sandisfield, 140 voters have already cast ballots by mail locally, 72 voters cast ballots in person early and six local residents mailed in ballots from overseas.

. . . At the Old Town Hall on Friday, eight voting booths were set up for early voting, with the ballot box at the back of the room.

"So, in the teams of two, one person has the ballot and calls out the vote, and the other person tallies," Miner told six poll workers who came to the training. "The teams will be made up of different political affiliations: tripartisan - Republican, Democrat and unenrolled.

"It's good if both people can see the ballot," Miner said. "I do not anticipate that anybody would be reading things off intentionally that they're not seeing, but it can happen accidentally. And then if there's a mark you have a question about, you can just call me or Amanda [Leavenworth, assistant town clerk] over.

"But, again," he told them. "The intent of the voter is the main thing we're looking for."

Miner knows the election may be called well before Sandisfield poll workers have finished their counting.

"We still do everything by the book and do it the right way because it's very important that right now everybody can see that everything is transparent and clear and obvious," Miner said.

. . . Most of the training entailed tallying procedures. "I just want to get everybody in the practice of doing this because, on the night of, it's going to be late, and its going to be hectic," Miner told the group. "I'm going to be tired and dehydrated."

But he won't be undernourished. While poll workers in some towns have structured potlucks on Election Day, Miner is planning to order breakfast for the group from the Southfield Store in Southfield and dinner from McGrane's On The Green in Winsted, Conn.

Miner and Leavenworth prepared a pile of sample ballots for the poll workers to tally using a page with a grid and numbers across the top. He explained how to fill in the marks. As Melissa Bye recorded her fourth ballot, she realized she'd filled out her tally sheet incorrectly. "My bad, I misunderstood," she said. "We're going to start over."

At 19, Mira Shea is helping tally the results of her own first vote along with all the others cast in Sandisfield. Shea works in the assessor's office and has already helped tally votes of the Sept. 3 state primary. She called that, "pretty chill." "There wasn't a lot of people, so it was good practice," she said. She graduated from Simsbury High School in 2023, tried a semester of college "and decided it wasn't for me." She said the training was helpful just to see the ballot.

"I think I know who I'm voting for," Shea said. "But I'm still doing a lot of research to figure it out."

Ron Pachulski appreciated the training although he, too, worked the state primary. "It's important," he said. "We can't afford to be having glitches Tuesday evening at 8:30 on this when the clock is ticking and we need to get the results ASAP."

In 2016, Sandisfield had 614 registered voters. He attributes the uptick in voter registration partly to a group of second homeowners who made Sandisfield their permanent address during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, he said the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump may have inspired some to register for the first time.

For his first time, Miner has roped off an area near the piano for observers to watch the count.

"Although it's so hard just to get people to count from 8 to 10 [p.m.]," he said. "I'm not sure we'll get people to come to watch people count from 8 to 10. We shall see."

Miner told the poll workers that on Election Day, there will be a strict no-talking policy when voters are in the room unless the voter has a question.