A vote center in California

Observing election workers: interactions, ceremonies, and drama

By Christopher Patten, civic design researcher at CCD

At 4:00 in the morning of Election Day 2018, Maggie Ollove and I departed a generic Best Western to observe 4 different voting locations around Waynesboro, Virginia. Unlike the chain hotel we stayed in, the polling places had a lot of personality. Seeing this, however, took patience and a wiliness to sit and watch. In fact, it took all day — a day that ended about 10pm. It was my first experience as anything other than a voter in a polling place, and I didn’t really know what to expect.

I packed my field research kit with a few pens, a notebook, and some data collection forms we had designed. We had specific feedback to collect around some exciting new forms and guides we had developed. This reflection and corresponding vignettes are what came out of this day.

As the day went on, I took visual notes to isolate scenarios and objects so I could focus on them in the moment. Observing an election was rare and deserved careful observation.

Throughout the day, I tried to find patterns in the polling locations we visited. Some procedures repeated from place to place, but I was looking for something else. After looking back through my notebooks, I found a few themes that caught my attention during the day. The following vignettes are those themes.

Some lead poll workers are hands-off, some hover over their teams. Some do either or both over the course of Election Day.

Election Official Personalities and Interactions: I quickly noticed how these individuals managed space, poll workers, and problems. There were different types.

Tools in a polling place include memory sticks, items at the check-in station, and a scanner for tallying votes from paper ballots

Ceremonial Tools: I thought of these objects as ceremonial because of the way people held, walked up to, or interacted with them. Everything held, contained, or transmitted the essence of an election: votes.

After the polls are closed, the work continues with calling in the preliminary results and sealing boxes of ballots.

Dramatic Moments: some of the instances that caught my attention struck me as highly scenographic: The packing tape rolling over a box of ballots; the voice of an election official announcing the final numbers to the general registrar over the phone.

The way poll workers and voters interact in a polling place colors the experience that both people have.

Quiet Interactions: Standing and watching revealed moments that showcased the humans behind the election process.

These themes are essentially assumptions. As a designer I need to check on those assumptions. What labels have I created in these themes? What contextual knowledge did I miss because I only saw one piece of the puzzle? Some immediate questions these vignettes raise for me are:

• How do election officials see their job of managing an election? Who do they look up to? What is their benchmark of a good election? How do they know they are doing their job well?
• What moments during an election day, if any, feel especially symbolic or even cinematic?
• Do certain election objects symbolize anything to election officials, poll workers, or voters? If so, what do they symbolize and why?
• How does an election official or poll worker show a voter, without words, that they are respecting their privacy?

Answering these questions will either provide validation or insight to what I saw. Seeking insights to these questions helps me focus during my next observation. To grow as a design researcher, I seek insight over validation. By looking for answers to these questions, I can test my assumptions. Not seeking insights leads to complacent design — the design equivalent of chain hotels.

Polling Place Stories are real stories about what happens in U.S. polling places on Election Day.