Hello,

I was suggesting teachers, but that's not absolute.

The concept is - at least in my county and much of Florida (yeah, I know, not Florida again!) is that we have trouble finding buildings large enough and with enough parking for polling places. Why do I know this? I was in charge of finding polling places and poll workers for Orange County (Orlando) in 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998. I had to find over 250 polling places and hire 1800 poll workers.

Why is it hard to find polling places? 1) not enough public buildings other than schools. 2) schools are over-crowed, don't have "empty" rooms for polling and have nearly full parking lots on Tuesdays. 3) We do use churches, but in the Bible Belt many denominations including the Southern Baptist say no to us holding elections in their churches. 4) If theres an issue such as gambling, more churches say no. 5) Many older churches are not compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and polling places have to be, by law. - This includes entrances, parking, bathrooms, etc. 6) We use fire stations when available, but they are dangerous to use for some-odd reason. 7) Many newly developed areas are huge tracts of houses occasionally interspersed with strip malls and grocery stores - not place to hold elections. 10% of my polling places were not even within the precinct which is definately frowned upon.

Making election day a holiday would work, but that would be 3 - 4 holidays in many states. The primarys, run-offs and general elections. On top of that, Orange County has multiple cities that hold elections throughout each year (not just state & national election years). While many of those could be moved, it would usually require ammending the cities' charter and on top of that there are always special elections for offices left vacant by promotion or death, bond issues, votes for new incorporation, etc (for instance, the City of Orlando just had a special election for mayor because our previous mayor went to Tallahassee to take over the job that Katherine Harris held (remember her?)).

Move elections to Saturdays would work. There are enough schools to use as polling places (we already double up some of our precincts in a couple high schools) The parking lots would be free, the electricity is up to code (computers are finicky about that), they're all ADA compliant, etc.

Why teachers? 1) They could use the extra pay, 2) They're reliable and used to working with people who don't know what their doing (like principals). 3) They understand computers (typically 60% of my poll workers were over the age of 65. They mostly don't understand computers, found it difficult to follow the legal proceedures required to make it a legit election, get tired during a work day that begins at 6am and ends at 7pm or later, and can get confused and or frustrated)

Depressing story: About 20% of our poll workers are poll deputies. They help keep order at the polls and are considered to be part of the Sheriff's Office. As such the Sheriff runs a quick check to see if they have any outstanding warrants. We tell the applicants that they will be checked for warrants and send them to the Sheriff Office to get their badges made. In 1998, I had 37 applicants who had outstnading warrants and were arrested when they went to get their badge. That's ove 10% of the people who wanted to be poll deputies. Yeesh.

And that's about it. Insiders know that the debacle of 2000 in Florida was primarily due to human error. Partly the error of poll workers (in Miami-Dade county, the average age of a poll worker is 73) and partly the error of the voter (who could be helped by better poll workers). Florida is not alone. It just happened that we were very close. If one of the candidates had had a significant lead, you wouldn't have heard one-tenth the noise made about our mistakes.

Gee - did I write all that? Must be the hurricanes from Pat O'Briens talking.

pax yall