Vooting is a chore - c-h-o-r-e!

The following is based on a true story.

My wife and I voted Tuesday. I'm sure the rest of you did the same, even though turnout in the area was below 33 percent.

We found our precinct table [which I'll admit we needed help with, but, hey, they moved it!], and my wife told the poll worker her name.

Here's the conversation as best as I can recall.

"What's your name?"

"Elise Skolnick."

"What?"

"Elise Skolnick. S-K..."

"S." The woman flipped the sign-in book to "S."

My wife pulled out her driver's license and tried to hand it to the woman.

The poll worker waved it away. "It's easier if you spell it."

I guess reading the driver's license would have been a challenge.

By now the poll worker was paging through the "S" section.

I stopped her and pointed at my wife's name.

"Sign here, Elsie."

"It's Elise."

[It's not just the poll worker — my wife is called Elsie on a regular basis by people who don't know her. And the poll worker did apologize.]

The man sitting next to the poll worker wrote "Elsie Skolnick" in the book that lists who voted in the precinct.

"It's Elise, not Elsie," I told him.

"What?"

"My wife's name is Elise, not Elsie. The 'i' goes before the 's' and not after it."

He asked me not to rush him so I just pointed at "Elsie" and he corrected it.

Then it was my turn.

The woman closed the book even though I was standing there.

"Name please."

"David Skolnick. S-K..."

"What?

"S-K..."

"S"

Helping hand

She opened the book to "S" and again I guided her to the page with my name on it.

"It's a good thing you reminded me or I wouldn't have had you sign your name, George."

George was the name below my wife's.

"I'm David."

"Oh, OK. Can I see your driver's license?"

I handed it to her and she "checked" it. My street number is 2246. The woman looked at the poll book and at my license and said "2646. Great. They match."

Despite this, I was ready to vote. Unfortunately, my voting machine didn't share that same readiness. It's a touch-screen meaning you touch the screen and it registers your vote. The machine I was using apparently was a punch screen because several attempts to touch buttons didn't work.

I asked another poll worker if there was a stylus I could use because my machine wasn't working. Poll workers in Mahoning County were trained to give voters a stylus to vote if their fingers didn't work. He must have missed that part of the training because he had no idea what I was talking about.

I finished voting by bracing the back of the machine with one hand while I pushed as hard as I could with a couple of fingers from the other hand to vote.

It was at least 10 minutes for my wife and I to vote with no line. I can only imagine what it's going to be like next year when turnout will be high because of the presidential race.

I shared my voting experience with Mark Munroe, the county elections board's vice chairman, and Thomas McCabe, its director. Apparently I wasn't the only one with poll worker issues.

"For the last few years we've heard horror stories from other counties [about problems with poll workers] and we've finally hit the tipping point this year," Munroe said.

No-show poll workers

The county had a lot of poll workers not show up because of illness on Tuesday leaving them scrambling for substitutes and leaving some precincts, including mine, with three instead of four poll workers.

The two say they are going to aggressively pursue new workers from high schools, colleges and civic organizations to work the polls. But getting paid about $110 to work a 13-hour day plus attend two training sessions probably doesn't sound appealing to most people.

So come March 2008, I have a strange feeling that voters are going to be waiting a long time in line. When they finally get to the poll workers and give their names, they'll be greeted with "what?"