Postmortem Report for Precinct 19-24 for the 11/4/25 Election

Summary

All thru the morning and well into the afternoon we had a very heavy turnout, with long lines inside and many cars at curbside. Such a large turnout was unexpected. We were understaffed to begin with because of dropouts and did not get a replacement Official, a BOE Staff member, until nearly 2:00 PM. The understaffing was definitely the most significant problem at this new polling place; some other problems are noted below. Fortunately the weather was excellent.

Because this was the first election held at this polling place, there were definitely things to learn. This was all new to the Election Officials, to the Hope Lutheran Church Staff, and to the parents involved with the preschool. We had excellent support from Hope Lutheran and look forward to future elections there.

Statistics

As of 11/2/25 the total number of registered 19-24 voters eligible for this election was 4913 (4322 in Wake Forest and 591 in Rolesville).

The turnout for this election was about 26.1% at the polling place and 2.7% via absentee voting (mail-in or one-stop) for a total of about 28.8% of the Precinct 19-24 people eligible to vote in this election. In contrast, for Wake County as a whole, 25.4% of the eligible voters cast ballots.

Tabulator vs ATV counts: 1280 vs 1280
Provisional ballots:         2
Spoiled ballots:            11
Emergency bin ballots:       0
Challenged ballots:          0

Curbside voters:            48
ExpressVote voters:          1
Observers:                   0  (0 Precinct-Specific Observers)
                                (0 At-Large Observers)

Eligible voters:          4913  (eligible to vote in this election)

Monday-list absentees:     133  (the long list in pollbook box #1)
Last-minute absentees:       2  (the short list gotten from the PO website)
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Total absentees:           135

Voting booths set up:       12  (includes 1 provisional and 1 accessible)
Total chairs at tables:      0
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Total "booths"              12  (two of the delivered 14 were defective)

Here is the Ballot Count Reconciliation web page.

Staffing and Email Considerations

We were originally assigned eleven Officials for this election. There were then a number of dropouts and the BOE Staffing Team reduced the target to nine, but finally only eight of the original assignees and the later replacements agreed to serve. This meant we were not able to cover all the normal polling place stations, even if we had gotten all nine. Apparently the BOE Staff's assumption was that the voter turnout would be pretty low, as in past municipal elections. I thought it might be around 300 at our polling place. All those estimates proved to be much too small. Fortunately the Officials we got did excellent work, both individually and as a team.

Contacting assigned Officials again turned out to be a problem. For one Official I sent two emails (unanswered), left two voice mails (unanswered), and finally delivered hardcopies to a man who answered the door and said he would give them to the prospective Official who lived there. I never heard from her, so I again contacted the Staffing Team about the problem. Days later they reported she was now officially dropped; I don't know if they ever reached her to find out what was going on.

As usual, some Officials reported my emails had been spam filtered; a subsequent phone call was required to tell them to check their spam folders. I have not been successful in getting the BOE Staff to tell Precinct Officials in the assignment letters to watch for emails from the Chief Judge; they should check spam folders at least daily.

Polling Place Setup

Assuming there would be a fairly low turnout and because we had fewer Precinct Officials than required, we configured for just two Registration Table lines. When the low turnout prediction turned out to be very wrong, we later reconfigured, on-the-fly, to three lines, although we did not have all the right material to do that properly. That also meant we had to pull an Official from elsewhere to handle the third line. I, the Chief Judge, then had to start filling in at curbside, the Tabulator, and the RT, etc., wherever an Official was most urgently required.

Photo ID, HAVA ID, and ATV Form

1. We did not have any photo ID problems. A far as I know, all voters successfully used an NC driver license for the ID. At least one had an expired license, but it had expired less than a year ago, so was acceptable. We had no HAVA ID exceptions. There were MANY "V" pollbook labels, but very few of those people came in to vote. There were no other exceptions. No voter forgot to bring in their photo ID and had to go back to the car to get it.
2. One RT Official mistakenly stuck the wrong label to an ATV and then followed the documented correction procedure. Fortunately the owner of the mis-stuck label did not come in to vote. We knew that would be the case because the mis-stuck label was for the spouse of the person who was voting (from curbside) and told us the other person would not be voting, as did turn out to be the case.

Registration Table

1. At our Monday Setup meeting, I went over my index-card-size flowchart that describes the RT procedures; I got very positive feedback. On Election Day the RT Officials used that for their personal notes and had the RT Quick Guide flowchart taped to the table, as required.
2. I audited all 1280 ATVs and found only one error -- an RT Official had not initialed an ATV. The BT did not catch the error. Because I was having to fill in elsewhere for much of the day, my audits were often done long after the ATVs had been created and after much RT Official shuffling had been done (whichever RT Official was available handled a waiting voter if the appropriate pollbook was available). So I had no good way to determine who had forgotten to initial. Since it did not occur again, that apparently was not a big problem. Given the stress of handling long lines (of sometimes impatient) voters, all the people who worked at the RT (and that eventually ended up being almost everyone) did an excellent job.
3. Only one person signed the Voter Assistance Log.

Ballot Table

We had two ballot styles, so two BT Officials and a scanner. Unfortunately the scanner did not work properly; it would not hold a charge and had to be kept plugged in to be usable. We rearranged the furniture a little to better allow the power cord to reach the outlet more easily. Our Coordinator later provided a replacement scanner, which worked properly. She said other polling places were having a similar problem with scanners.

Help Table

1. Very surprisingly, given the heavy turnout and the many "V"s in the pollbook, we had hardly any Help Table activity. Just a couple of the many "V" people voted. That was fortunate since it freed up the HT Official to work at the BT.
2. One young lady had pre-registered at the DMV when she got her driver license at age 16. Two years later the full registration had still not taken effect; she had not received any notice of a problem. She voted provisionally and I gave her information about how to check her registration online so she could be sure the registration-by-provisional-envelope had worked by the March election.
3. Our HT got one call from another polling place to do the "T" processing, which went well. On the other hand, our HT did not have to call any other polling places to handle an Unreported Move. Our HT Official noted that the new "Unreported Move" procedure is NOT documented well in the Manual.

Line Monitor and Door Monitor

1. We did not have enough Officials to provide either a Door Monitor or a Line Monitor. That was not good since it allowed the problem below. We also saw that some voters ignored the sign that told them to get in the RT line per the first letter of their last name; having a Line Monitor would have solved that problem.
2. One voter reported that a male candidate, wearing a campaign shirt, had entered the Voting Enclosure and then had left. The door is far away from where the Officials were working, so we couldn't see this thru the long RT wait lines. We later reported it to our Coordinator, who said she thought she knew who it might be. She later went out and warned the campaigners about this. However it was the long-gone candidate, not a campaigner, who was the problem.

Curbside

1. We had many (48) curbside voters this time, sometimes multiple such voters per car. Sometimes the curbside voters were accompanied by non-curbside voters who were required to go inside and stand in one of the long lines before being able to return to the car and waiting curbside voter. We used two Officials to handle the traffic, at least when we could scrape up two. I, the CJ, frequently had to be the second. A little before 2:00 the BOE Staff sent us someone to help out. She was in fact a member of the BOE Staff and did a great job at both curbside and at the RT. However she should have been sent much earlier when we had reported the line and curbside problems were not going away by 9:00; that's when things usually ease up in a "low turnout" election. The BOE also knew before Election Day that we were understaffed because I had often pointed this out.
2. This was a brand new polling place, so we had no prior experience with curbside setup for it. I now see some additional signs are needed. Despite being told to do otherwise by the Pastor, our contact at Hope Lutheran, some Church employees still parked in the curbside area. The area was well designated on the map I had made for the Church. Unfortunately we did not have enough signs to mark the full length of the area for those who might have ignored or forgotten the map. The curbside area became crowded with the cars of those who actually needed to vote curbside. Fortunately there was always just enough room.
3. The curbside area was almost completely dark after 6:00 PM. I had some small LED lights that we used to highlight several signs and the curbside stand, but we need to improve on that. Fortunately we had no more curbside cars after it got dark (or maybe they couldn't find curbside and gave up.)

Coordinator

We had several visits from our Coordinator. She replaced a defective scanner early in the day. She contacted the BOE Staff to reinforce my earlier calls that we were understaffed and slammed by the unexpectedly large turnout. At the end of the day she was a tremendous help in getting all the BOE equipment packed into a small outside closet for pickup by the mover. Prior to the election I had kept her in the loop, copying her on all the emails I sent to my Officials. Those included the links to my website so she could see exactly what we planned to do.

Voters

I heard there was some voter impatience because of the long lines and because we had originally set up for two, then had to convert to three on-the-fly. However most voters seemed to recognize what we were having to deal with and were doing the best we could under the circumstances.

Campaigners/Others

1. This polling place does not have a very good place for campaigners to set up large facilities. The best place is near the main door to the administrative area. However there is preschool traffic thru that door. Church personnel expressed concerns about this. The campaigners also had concerns since there was no other good place to set up tables. I, the Church people, and the campaigners had discussions. We worked it out, but I can foresee problems in March when there will be MANY more campaigners wanting to use that area and along the narrow sidewalk leading to it. The Pastor said they are looking into making the March Election Day a teacher workday. Note the preschool is not part of WCPSS and so does not go by the WCPSS now-mandatory "Election Day is a teacher workday".
2. There was a lot of voter confusion going thru that congested area, with voters often wanting to go thru the campaign workers setups and on to the administrative door instead of continuing to the "Red Door" entrance to the Voting Enclosure". Of course we had signs, but they were not good enough in that congested area. We will need to come up with something better. In this election, the campaign workers were very helpful in steering voters the right way.
3. I did not hear any complaints about campaign workers wanting to use the unavailable restrooms. Of course in this election there were far fewer campaign workers than there will be in March.
4. I hung tape #4 in a well lit area inside the "Red Door" and notified the remaining campaign workers when it was available. There were no problems in that area.
5. The campaign workers did a very good job cleaning up. I found nothing left when I did my check on Wednesday morning.

Observers

We had no Observers. We did note that because of the narrow Voting Enclosure, we won't have space for many Observers in future elections and where they have to be placed may not be what they might want.

ExpressVote

1. We had one ExpressVote user. He had no problems.
2. It took some searching at the end of the day, but we finally found the ExpressVote ballot amongst the other 1279 larger ballots so we could pack it on top.
3. For this election I had copied the relevant pages from the Manual and Chief Judge Pocket Guide so I could put a hardcopy of those pages by the ExpressVote, where the instructions are needed. There is still no hardcopy setup/use/takedown document packed with the ExpressVote as there had been with the AutoMark.

Tabulator and Black Tabulator Base

There were no significant problems in this area.

Reconciliation Process

The end-of-day ballot reconciliation worked very well. I had provided a ballot count worksheet and copy of a draft Reconciliation form for the Ballot Table. Our BT Official completed all this before the Judges got involved, so all we had to do was doublecheck the arithmetic and copy the numbers to the official form. That went very quickly vs the time it takes if we have to start from scratch. See Ballot Count Reconciliation for 11/4/25 for the worksheet.

Packing Up

1. Packing up is always a hectic time, as we rush to meet the deadline for the dropoff site. We use a Packing Up after the Election set of pages to try to keep things organized. One of our Officials acted as a packup coordinator and did a very good job. The Tabulator and the Black Tabulator Base were temporarily misplaced in our LONG Voting Enclosure area and the tightly packed BOE movers closet, but we found them.
2. In past polling places we used two large tables to keep separate the items that must go to the BOE dropoff site vs those I take home, e.g., some signs I keep in my garage between elections. At this polling place the BOE supplied the furniture including all the tables. Those tables had to be packed for the BOE movers and were not available for collection duty. So we used the "Kitchen" counter for both "tables". It was somewhat cramped. Next time we will clear it better to provide more room.
3. The BOE storage area (where the BOE movers had placed the voting booths, etc.) turned out to be a closet outside the Voting Enclosure -- really outside. There is an overhang over its door, but we sure hope we never have wind and rain at packup time.

   Although the closet is pretty spacious, there were a LOT of big items to pack in it -- 5 big tables and 14 chairs, 14 voting booths, the Tabulator Base, the ExpressVote and its table, a bunch of A-frame signs, and the gray bin. The movers fit everything in with no room to spare. Then we had to recreate that packing Tuesday night -- not easy, especially when rushed. By this time our BOE Staff replacement Official had to go work elsewhere, so we were again back down to our original eight Officials, three of whom were Judges and not available to do the closet stuffing. Again, thanks to our Coordinator who stayed to help with this.

Hardware and Supplies

1. Pollbook labels were very hard to remove. The result was sometimes rips and often extraneous scraps that got attached to the ATVs. Were the perforations done properly by the printer?
2. The CJ Starter kit Polling Place Report said we would get two laptops, even though we were understaffed and could have at most one HT Official (in fact usually our HT had NO Officials in this election). Then the Report in the Saturday pickup items said we would get only one laptop, which made more sense. However at Monday pickup they gave me two laptops, per their instruction sheet. We used only one

   For reference, last November, despite the Polling Place Report saying we would get two laptops for the SCES polling place, they provided only one at Monday pickup. They had to deliver a second one on Tuesday, which we definitely needed. In March we should get two laptops for Hope Lutheran.

3. As noted above, the original scanner was bad and was replaced by our Coordinator.
4. We red tagged two bad booths. The elastic no longer worked in the legs of one. The privacy shield in the other was cracked and wouldn't hold.
5. We red-tagged one bad pollbook binder, whose rings did not close properly.
6. There was no "N" tab for the pollbooks.
7. After dark we had to use my small LED lights to try to highlight some signs and the curbside stand.
8. We could not check out the cell phone at Monday setup because of a "Verizon problem".

See Hardware and Supplies for some other supplies comments from past elections that still apply, e.g., for the CJ lanyard and card holder.

See BOE Wish List for my current general wish list.

Documentation and Training

Over the months before this election I have emailed a lot of document comments. Some of the more significant are also noted in Actions for Remaining Proposals and Comments.

Miscellaneous

1. As usual the "don't open" ballot box labels applied at weekend supply pickup tend to get unstuck easily and even fall off completely, e.g., in the trunk of my car before I unload the boxes to my house. The Voted and Unvoted labels we Judges apply on Election Day seem to stick better. I have been told that all the labels are from the same stock. Is it just that we apply our labels more carefully? At the CJ class another CJ pointed out exactly the same problem, as I have done for many years now.
2. We put in the blue bag a Deceased Voter form and two Registration forms.
3. One voter reported she might have left her second set of car keys in the voting booth, but we could not find them.

Suggestions for the Future

1. Now that we have had this election experience at the new Hope Lutheran Church polling place, we know some additional signs are needed for curbside and also for inside the Voting Enclosure. The latter means we need two more sign kits (the sign stands) from the BOE. As for what outside signs will be needed, that will depend on whether Hope Lutheran does declare the next Election Day as a teacher work day.
2. There were some Tuesday night dropoff problems, detailed in an email to the BOE Staff. Included was a comment that the two hardcopy "Remote Site Collection Information" pages I received listed two different backup delivery sites, although both pages had a 2025.v.1 revision code. Fortunately, after apparently resolving some internal BOE communication problems, they let me deliver at my primary site at 9:30.
3. See Actions for Remaining Proposals and Comments.
4. In the CJ portal, say who has signed up for classes. You already say who has taken them. Then CJs can help bug the laggards who haven't signed up.
5. Put the PO assignees list back on the PO website. I was told it was removed because it had personal data (which data?), not because it named the POs and exposed them to harassment. The assignees list was very useful, e.g., to let a PO learn the name of the CJ for the PO's assigned precinct. Then the PO would know to expect contact from that CJ and should regularly check if that person had been spam filtered. More on this is in suggestions about CJs contacting their assigned Officials.

Pictures

For some pictures and explanatory text about the 19-24 Voting Enclosure, voting equipment, etc., see the Election on 11-4-2025 album. General pre-election pictures for the Hope Lutheran Church facility are in the Hope Lutheran Church album.

If you are unfamiliar with viewing Google Photo albums, here are some hints. In particular, note how to use the "circle i" to view the full text beside each picture. When viewing the information, be sure to scroll to the top; sometimes Google Photos starts the information display partway down.

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