A few minutes before the polls close, the chief election judge comes outside

[struggle4progress]

15. What I thought was interesting was that the election judge wanted to know what folk thought

but I don't mind telling you what I heard

Remember it was a primary and school board election, so mostly only the dedicated turned-out: in my town, that's about 15% of registered voters

Also we only approached folk leaving the polls. With some regularity, people responded to my Would you like some info about changes in the voting rules? with I've already voted! This seemed a strange reaction to me (since I was obviously approaching only people walking away from the polls), and in a few cases I got the lit into their hands anyway by explaining some of these changes don't occur until 2016

If I had a chance after offering the lit, then (whether they took the lit or not), I'd ask whether they had any problem voting today. In two shifts in two different towns, almost everyone reported no problems. I only heard about five problems reported

Two involved folk who didn't understand the ID rules. Photo ID won't be required from ALL voters until 2016, but NC has for some years required HAVA-type documents from first-time voters (such as a current utility bill with name and address), and one first-time voter talked to us about that on his way out

During my second shift, several people told me they thought the line inside moved too slowly. So when the election judge asked about the survey, I told her I hadn't been looking at the survey and then reported the comments I'd heard. She said the computer system had changed and the poll workers weren't comfortable with it yet; she thought they'd do better in the fall

If I could get lit into folks' hands, I tried to get them to do the university survey. That was a harder sell.

Some people assumed the lit attempted some persuasion -- but actually it only summarized in simple language the changes in the law. Similarly, a certain number of folk expected the survey to be something of a push-poll -- but it wasn't. So maybe five or six folk worked themselves up for an argument about voter photo ID, and I responded by saying that I was only trying to inform people about the actual changes in the law, which I suspect spared me some predictable rants