This is part six of an eight-part series about elections and voting in Kansas.
For Sedgwick County poll worker Andrea Suttle, volunteering to help mail out advance ballots and working the polls on Election Day, is a way to demonstrate citizenship and give back to her community.
“After I decided to give up my career as a paraeducator in special education and stay at home and care for my own children, I was looking at a way to give back and to be a better citizen,” she says. Suttle has three children and is a homeschool mom.
Suttle says she tries to respond when the election office calls, whether it’s to work in the office helping get ready for a coming election or putting in a long, long day on Election Day. She says the other people she works with at the polls are everyday, ordinary people, just like her.
She is baffled by the current doubts among some voters about the security and fairness of U.S. elections.
“I’ve never understood why anyone would think you could falsify ballots or tamper with voting machines,” she says. “You sign everything, you put your stamp on everything you do. And it’s not just that, there are checks and balances built into the system. Audits are done at random. On Election Day, everything is done in pairs. You have someone you work with, and both workers sign everything. It’s impossible to falsify anything.”
She says the sometimes-heated reactions from people who are concerned about the security of elections can be hard to negotiate and it is important for poll workers to be able to de-escalate and explain how the process works.
“A lot of times when people have a visceral reaction, they are truly scared that something is happening that shouldn’t be happening. If you can sit down and talk past it, they are relieved and are reassured that everything is free and fair. If they still have questions I can’t answer, I tell them who they can call to get answers.”
Primary is closed in Kansas
Suttle says her very first election as a poll worker was an August primary, which in Kansas is closed. That means a voter has to be affiliated with a party to get that party’s ballot and can only vote for candidates in that party. An unaffiliated voter can declare an affiliation on Election Day or on advance voting days, but a voter with an affiliation can’t change their affiliation for a primary after noon on June 1. (The Aug. 2 primary this year offered a rarity: there was a ballot just for unaffiliated voters so they could weigh in on the proposed constitutional amendment on abortion, which all Kansas were eligible to vote on.)
Suttle says she has never worked the same polling place twice, so she has firsthand knowledge that the system works the same way no matter where you live or what precinct you cast your ballot in. It doesn’t change from city elections to primaries or special elections to presidential elections.
“I’ve done all kinds and sizes of elections. This year’s primary was much bigger than a normal primary because the abortion amendment was on the ballot and the turnout was a record,” she says. That meant a longer wait than normal at some precincts because staffing is generally done based on expected turnout.
Good role model for kids
Suttle says she likes the fact her children are growing up knowing how important it is to vote and that their mother contributes to the American system of government by and for the people.
“For poll workers, Election Day is a long, long day. We are there by 4:45 a.m. We get a short lunch break and usually get to go home about 8 p.m. If you are lucky, your polling site is set up the night before. Otherwise, you have to set up when you get there. That means running a zero tape to verify that there are no existing votes stored in the system. Every election worker at that site signs that tape and witnesses that the machine holds zero votes at the start of the day. That has to be done for every machine as you get it up and going by 6 a.m., when the doors open.”
Voting machines are nothing more than fancy scanners and printers, she says. They are not connected to the Internet and the only way for them to tabulate a ballot is for it to be scanned in.
Election workers also set up clean, secure workplaces for voters who are casting provisional or paper ballots.
Before the polls open, workers gather as a group and are sworn in, pledging their allegiance to the U.S. and Kansas constitutions.
The number of poll workers at any polling station depends on the number of voters eligible to cast ballots there. Suttle says early voting polling stations tend to be larger. A site such as Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita may have as many as 20 workers and smaller stations as few as six.
“Those express voting machines can only do what you tell them to do,” she says. “The program only allows voting for those people who are candidates in this election. It’s similar technology to the machines in a restaurant that allow you to order on a touch screen. Each ballot gets a new barcode that prints off on the ballot. And you get a review of your choices before printing so if you change your mind or made a mistake, you can correct it. If you miss it on the screen, you can check your printed ballot and make sure that it is your choices that printed out. If you want to change anything, you can ask a worker to void that ballot so you can correct it. But election workers have to document that and have it witnessed. There’s no way for the worker to change anything after the ballot is scanned.”
Poll workers undergo training every year. For those who are working as a judge or will be in charge of a polling place, there is extra classroom training and sessions on how to talk to people, explain the process and ask and answer questions. If a voter asks a question and the worker doesn’t know the answer, it is their job to refer them to the elections office, Suttle says.
Mail-in confusion
Voters who wish to vote by mail need to apply for each election in time for workers to send out a ballot and for it to be mailed back. The only automatic mail-in ballots that are sent out go to people who have filled out paperwork to verify chronic illness or disability that prevents them from voting in person.
The person casting the ballot must sign in the spot designated. If someone else brings the ballot to a voting station, that person must sign in a different spot on the back of the ballot. If those signatures are not there, the ballot is not legal.
Suttle has seen confusion about the mail-in process arise when people get an application for a mail-in ballot from civic organizations that try to help people apply in time to vote by mail.
“People get concerned that they are getting multiple ballots when what they are actually getting are multiple applications to apply for a ballot,” she says. “Once the election office has sent out the actual mail-in ballot, that’s it. A second one is not sent out.”
She says that people also get concerned if they got their ballot but didn’t get it in the mail ahead of Election Day. She advised those people to bring their ballot with them and go to a polling place. If it is already filled out, there’s a box to deposit it in. If it hasn’t been filled out yet, the voter can go to a secure table, sit down, fill it out and drop it in the box. If they do that, it is counted as a mail-in ballot, not a provisional one.
If they do not have their mail-in ballot with them, they can still vote a provisional ballot that won’t be counted until the election office verifies that the mail-in ballot never arrived.
Faith in the process
“I believe in our process. If we want to see democracy continue, then the conduct of elections and the voting process is critical,” she says. “I’ve always been interested in politics and history, and I’m the type of person who has 1,000 questions about why it goes the way it goes. Each election, I get to learn something and to meet other people who want to be part of our election process.
“I appreciate the way we, as a nation, choose our public officials. It’s not always an easy job to show up for but I think it is an important teaching tool for my kids to know that mom is going to work to make sure people get to vote,” she says.
She said there is also sometimes a reaction by voters who say, “The election must have been rigged. Everybody I talked to said they were voting for Candidate X or voting yes or no on a ballot question.”
She said she has to remind them that many people prefer not to discuss their vote and names are never attached to ballots.
“The fact that it’s private is what makes our elections safe,” she says. “If you take away that right to privacy, you take away people’s confidence in voting. You create an atmosphere where if their candidate loses, the winner has a way of identifying and punishing those who voted against him. That’s not democracy. That’s dictatorship.”
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