Chatter at Department of Elections in Georgetown

In this age of the internet and instant information, election night trips to the Department of Elections in Georgetown aren’t as exciting as they once were. There was a time when candidates gathered in the back offices to watch returns come in. Now, once the polls have closed and results have been transmitted to election central in Dover, activity at the department in Georgetown feels mostly like mopping up.

But I still enjoy it. As the millennials like to say, it still has some of that OG feel to it. Original. Authentic. OG derives from Original Gangsta.

Kenny McDowell, Democrat, and Jean Turner, Republican, still lord over the operation. Kenny is director of the Sussex operation. Jean is deputy director. The party that holds the keys to the Governor’s Office determines who is director and who is deputy director.

All Kenny and Jean have to do is make sure the election process goes well in Sussex. This year, by all accounts, the process went smoothly for the most part. Election machine technician Bill Carey said there were a few glitches with write-in procedures. “We had about 15 to 20 jams due to write-ins - attempted write-ins,” said Carey. “But we straightened them out.”

It’s no small operation getting 105,814 people in and out of polling places and voting booths. McDowell said this year’s election in Sussex included 73 polling places, 877 clerks, judges and inspectors working at the polls, and another 30 or so workers dispatching and retrieving equipment and materials at the Department of Elections office.

How much did the one day cost in terms of labor?

McDowell and Turner conferred. “Probably between $130,000 and $140,000,” they said. Clerks receive $190 for their hours at the polls, judges receive $195 and inspectors receive $260. “People call all the time looking for work,” said McDowell. “Some say, ‘It’s my Christmas fund.’ Others just want to be part of a historic election like this one,” he said.

A Democrat named Bill Gordy held the director’s position before McDowell was appointed in 1991. “Bill always told me to look at the percentage of the electorate that had voted by noon, double that, and you’ll get a good sense - within a point or two - of what the final percentage will be. Today we had about 33 percent voting by noon. We ended up with 68 percent when all was said and done, so once again he was right.”

This year there were 155,512 people registered to vote. Of those, 105,814 voted. That 68 percent ties the record for voter turnout in Sussex County set in the presidential election year of 2012. Presidential election years, he said, always bring out more voters than off-year elections.

At the Shields Elementary polling place in Lewes, an inspector told McDowell they tallied about a 76 percent turnout. “Lewes always turns out strong for elections,” said McDowell. “Presidential elections, school board races, Lewes always turns out.”

The same inspector said she only had one complaint to deal with from voters. Three or four voters, she said, complained that they felt uncomfortable when approached outside the polling place by U.S. Sen. Tom Carper. He was on hand supporting Democrat candidates. She said she went outside to discuss the situation with him. He responded, she said, that he had been doing this for 30 years and had never received complaints before.

The inspector said nothing about further complaints after that.

Carper took a few minutes from a busy, post-election day in Washington Wednesday evening to discuss what happened. “I was talking to different people in line, just making sure they were being introduced to some of the Democrat candidates. In this case I think it was Leslie Ledogar. What I took note of, however, was that someone had arbitrarily drawn a line within which no campaigning was allowed. That line was about twice what the law prescribes which is a 50-foot circle perimeter around the entrance to the poll. Like what you would draw with a compass. Drawing that line much farther out is not right. It was at least 100 feet at Shields. We should go by the law. I’ve been doing this a long time, so I know what the rules are.”

Carper said he had a pleasant conversation with the inspector. “She was a nice young lady. I think what she was most concerned about was a stack of papers she had in her hand - maybe a sample ballot - that she heard Republicans were passing out to voters within the no campaigning zone. I didn’t see anything like that happening so I couldn’t comment.”

Democracy in action. Ain’t it grand?