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Primary Day in Canton: From
pre-dawn to late night with Town Clerk Tracy Kenney
By Tanya Willow
Special to the Citizen
The moon is
still in the sky over Canton’s Town Hall when poll workers are
due to come in and collect their wares so that they can be at
their precincts when the polls open at 7 in the morning. Because
of the timing of Senator Ted Kennedy’s death, Massachusetts is
holding a primary election for his seat on this clear but snow
covered Tuesday in December.
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Tracy Kenney, Assistant Town Clerk
Gale McHugo, and Kathy Dever, senior clerk, get ready to count
the ballots.
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Tracy Kenney,
Canton’s town clerk, is alone in Town Hall with a custodian who
will help her wardens bring the hefty supplies out to their cars
once they arrive. When they do, they are sworn in and then talk
about the issues at hand.
Daneene Pate
has lost her son-in law and her mother in just the past few
weeks. She arrives at the town clerk’s office depleted of all
her energies, but she will not leave Tracy without a poll worker
because she knows that it is not easy to get replacements.
Tracy talks
with her, asks if she’ll be all right and assures Daneene that
if she needs it she will find someone to take her position
during the course of the day. Daneene heads precinct five and
shares the Kennedy School with Nancy Gowe, who heads precinct
four. Tracy is thinking that perhaps Nancy can perform
double-duty as warden for both precincts.
There is still
no light coming in the windows at the town clerk’s office when
Nancy Gowe arrives. She tells Tracy she has spent the morning
vomiting. She, too, knows Tracy will have trouble replacing her.
Tracy is now concerned about both of her wardens at the Kennedy
School.
When Gale
McHugo, assistant town clerk, comes into the office armed with
tea and donuts for the long day ahead, Tracy tells her of the
ailing poll workers. Tracy would rather have her assistant in
the office stay by the computers and phone, but worries she may
lose her to the understaffed precincts at the Kennedy School,
which will make managing today’s election much more difficult.
The town clerk
understands that her fleet of retiree poll workers are
vulnerable to the slings and arrows of age, but they are a stoic
generation and it turns out Tracy need not worry. Daneene and
Nancy remain on for their 14-hour shifts — a long day even for a
far younger person.
But the town
clerk’s band of poll workers are not only reliable; they are
experienced and can handle most of the situations that will
arise during the course of any Election Day. For example, the
voting machine at the Kennedy School decides to stick a little.
Since Tracy is at the Kennedy to see how Daneene and Nancy are
feeling, the poll workers ask her to take a look at it. The
usual tricks just aren’t working.
“Can you say a
little prayer over it?” a good- humored poll worker asks Tracy.
The ballots aren’t dropping smoothly into the basket below for
some reason. Though the problem is irritating, Tracy can’t help
but smile at the smartly dressed white-haired woman presiding
over the voting box.
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Canton’s Town Hall at 5:45
a.m. on primary Election Day
Tanya
Willow photo
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Tracy
remembers a similar complaint about another machine at another
precinct. The problem is not with the computer. It’s with the
cabinet the computer is encased in. After opening the cabinet
and doing some realigning, the ballots drop down but not
perfectly. The procedure might have to be repeated during the
course of the day. It may be a little inconvenient for today’s
election, but it will work. Tracy takes a mental note to have
the boxes checked by a custodian.
While Tracy is
listening to her wardens talk about the problem with the
ballots, Gale McHugo raises her on the Nextel phone. It seems
the voters from precinct three are still headed to the Blue
Hills Chateau restaurant rather than the gym. There is a
function there this morning and the patrons of the restaurant
are tired of being disrupted by the lost voters and are turning
them away.
Tracy now has
a more urgent problem on her hands. She knows Daneene and Nancy
can take care of the sticking ballot box and so she drives out
to the Blue Hills Regional School to find out what’s going on.
Five days
earlier the town clerk’s office was told that the Blue Hills
Regional School’s Chateau restaurant would not be available on
Election Day. It seems a function had been scheduled at the
Chateau before the special election date was set by the
governor’s office. Precinct three voters, accustomed to going to
the Chateau, would have to go to the Blue Hills Regional gym
instead.
There was no
time to notify voters. It was too late for the weekly papers and
Canton Community TV was blown off the air by a windstorm earlier
in the week and had yet to come back on. Just days before the
election, using telephone notification technology out of the
town’s M.I.S. (Management Information Systems) office headed by
Louis Jutras, Tracy’s office had been able to call voters in the
third precinct directly. However, when the call comes in from
Gale on Election Day that there is confusion at precinct three,
Tracy is not terribly surprised.
When the town
clerk arrives at Blue Hills Regional she likes what she sees.
There are plenty of signs pointing voters away from the
restaurant and to the gym. She also likes the gym location.
There is excellent handicapped access and the gym is plenty big.
Still, she’s concerned that voters, despite the signage, are
going to the restaurant. Tracy figures voters must be on
“automatic pilot.”
She drops in
on precinct three warden Wally Gibbs and Tony Pate who tell her
that the voters are coming to the gym upset. They say they were
rudely dismissed from the Chateau. The town clerk listens to her
wardens and then walks to the information booth at the school.
After a brief conversation with Mary Kiley, who works out of the
superintendent’s office, Tracy is assured that whoever is being
impatient with the voters must be a patron of the restaurant —
there is a political fundraiser going on there — and that the
school will make sure the voters find their way to the gym in a
kinder fashion.
Tracy leaves
happy with the outcome. She likes the gym as a voting location,
but the gym is usually in use during the school day, so when
Massachusetts picks a U.S. Senator at the January 19th election,
voters in precinct three will be back at the Chateau restaurant.
From Blue
Hills Regional, Tracy drives to the Luce School to drop off
additional blank ballots. There is plenty of parking because
there is no school. After a discussion with the town clerk’s
office, Canton’s superintendent moved the schools’ professional
day to Election Day, making for far less competition for spaces
and far less traffic for elderly and handicapped voters. It’s
not always possible to do that, but Tracy comments that it makes
parking much easier.
Inside the
Luce gym a makeshift barrier made of gymnastic mats has been
taped on its side around the tables where the chilled poll
workers sit. They are quite content behind the barrier, saying
the brilliant idea has made the gym door’s opening and closing
much more tolerable. The town clerk talks with the wardens who
update her, but they have once again handled the day’s issues so
Tracy is free to return to the office.
The town clerk
has not put down her purse when Gale tells her a woman said her
husband registered to vote with the Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV),
but the paperwork never made its way to Canton. The registry
gave him a receipt but that was in March and he has no idea
where it is now.
Rather than
wait for the town clerk’s office to try and confirm with the
registry, the voter decided to give up and not vote. He could
have taken a “contingency ballot” that would have allowed his
vote to count once his registration was confirmed, but had
decided against it. Both Gale and Tracy are visibly frustrated
with the registry’s system, feeling that this particular error
happens too often and that the RMV needs to make improvements in
how it communicates with local communities, but this is not a
problem that can be resolved today. Tracy sits down. Her old tea
is still on the desk. The windows behind her are once again
black. The only difference from this morning is that season’s
lights that hang on the trees in the parking lot are now on.
Once the polls
close, the town clerk’s office can only wait for the boxes and
computers to be brought to the Salah Room at Town Hall. Tracy,
Gale and Kathy Dever, the senior clerk, see the same wardens
from this morning, only this time the wardens and ballots are
escorted by police to ensure the integrity of the process.
After the
counting is done, Tracy is obligated to call the results in to
the Associated Press, a presumed neutral body, who will make the
statewide totals available immediately. She will have five days
to send her certified tallies to the Election Division of the
Secretary of State’s office but the official statewide count
will take weeks.
Once Canton’s
ballots are counted and the results made public the boxes that
contain the ballots are brought down the elevator from the Salah
room, escorted by Gale, a police officer and the town clerk. The
votes will stay in storage by law for 22 months.
The town
clerk’s office will repeat the process all over again on January
19 when the state of Massachusetts chooses its U.S. senator.
January 14, 2010
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