‘Elections happen by magic'

While voters started streaming to their voting precincts this morning, the process of casting votes actually began early Monday morning at the Supervisor of Elections’ warehouse on Old Bethel Road in Crestview.

Precinct clerks and their assistants lined up to be issued their polls’ respective supplies, many well before the actual 8 a.m. pick-up time. Off-duty firefighters volunteered to help marshal the bundles of materials and pieces of equipment. Many clerks were well versed in the routine, having experienced many, many elections.

Vivian Harrelson has been precinct 11’s clerk for years, starting when Pat Hollarn was supervisor of elections.

“She said the last year under Pat was going to be her last year,” said current Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux. “I said, ‘Miss Vivian, you’re not allowed to quit,’ so she said, ‘Well, I’ll just keep working.’”

Voting machine technician Dustin Ball hauled touch-screen voting machines for the handicapped and canvas bags containing ballots, precinct registers, vote tabulating machines and laptop computers to the table set up in the warehouse doorway. As he did, warehouse foreman Alan Freiberg carefully reviewed each piece in turn with Harrelson, noting serial numbers on an inventory sheet.

For some of the equipment, such as the Accu-Vote optical scanners, Harrelson and her fellow clerks had to trust Freiberg’s checked and rechecked lists. The machine itself was under seal in its thick canvas bag, and couldn’t be opened until Tuesday morning. Then, Harrelson’s assistant clerk would double-check again to make sure none of the sealed bags had been tampered with.

Equipment the clerks received included cell phones, provided at no cost to the county by Verizon, apart from charges for minutes used. The phones and the laptop computers allowed the clerks and poll workers to keep in touch with Lux’s office.

“The laptop is a means of forestalling some of the phone calls,” Lux explained.

For example, should a voter have arrived at the wrong polling place having moved since the last time he voted, workers could use the computer to check voter registrations. They could then direct him to the correct precinct without the voter having to phone the supervisor of elections’ office.

“It’s been an interesting day so far,” Lux said at 8:05 a.m. “I’ve already been on e-mail with a poll worker in Afghanistan who was having problems.”

Okaloosa County’s servicemen and women abroad were voting, too, and Lux has to oversee the process for county voters be they abroad as well as at home.

After the Crestview area precinct clerks gathered their materials, Lux’s team — and equipment — would move to Niceville. They then wound up the day at the county fairgrounds where they outfitted Fort Walton Beach’s precinct clerks.

While some clerks had to secure the equipment at their homes overnight, others could start setting up their polling places on Tuesday. Polling locations include churches, municipal buildings, schools and civic organization halls.

“Most of our precincts are real good about letting them in the night before,” Lux said. “Many entrust the clerks with a key to the facility.”

After carefully reviewing her supplies list with Freiberg, Harrelson had accounted and signed for the stack of equipment and materials that had been loaded on a dolly by Crestview fireman Matthew Cunningham. After another round of hugs and handshakes with clerks who had joined the queue while she was signing out her supplies, Harrelson was ready to set up her precinct.

“Pat (Hollarn) was always fond of saying elections happen by magic,” Lux said.

It may appear that way to the voter who enters a polling place that is all set up and ready for votes to be cast and recorded. But step into that busy warehouse on Old Bethel Road the day before election day, and an observer realizes there are many magicians working behind the scenes who make the “magic” happen.