Primary Day in Canton: From pre-dawn to late night with Town Clerk Tracy Kenney

By Tanya Willow

The moon is still in the sky over Canton’s Town Hall when poll workers are due to come in and collect their wares so that they can be at their precincts when the polls open at 7 in the morning. Because of the timing of Senator Ted Kennedy’s death, Massachusetts is holding a primary election for his seat on this clear but snow covered Tuesday in December.

Tracy Kenney, Canton’s town clerk, is alone in Town Hall with a custodian who will help her wardens bring the hefty supplies out to their cars once they arrive. When they do, they are sworn in and then talk about the issues at hand.

Daneene Pate has lost her son-in law and her mother in just the past few weeks. She arrives at the town clerk’s office depleted of all her energies, but she will not leave Tracy without a poll worker because she knows that it is not easy to get replacements.

Tracy talks with her, asks if she’ll be all right and assures Daneene that if she needs it she will find someone to take her position during the course of the day. Daneene heads precinct five and shares the Kennedy School with Nancy Gowe, who heads precinct four. Tracy is thinking that perhaps Nancy can perform double-duty as warden for both precincts. 

There is still no light coming in the windows at the town clerk’s office when Nancy Gowe arrives. She tells Tracy she has spent the morning vomiting. She, too, knows Tracy will have trouble replacing her. Tracy is now concerned about both of her wardens at the Kennedy School.

When Gale McHugo, assistant town clerk, comes into the office armed with tea and donuts for the long day ahead, Tracy tells her of the ailing poll workers. Tracy would rather have her assistant in the office stay by the computers and phone, but worries she may lose her to the understaffed precincts at the Kennedy School, which will make managing today’s election much more difficult.

The town clerk understands that her fleet of retiree poll workers are vulnerable to the slings and arrows of age, but they are a stoic generation and it turns out Tracy need not worry. Daneene and Nancy remain on for their 14-hour shifts — a long day even for a far younger person.

But the town clerk’s band of poll workers are not only reliable; they are experienced and can handle most of the situations that will arise during the course of any Election Day. For example, the voting machine at the Kennedy School decides to stick a little. Since Tracy is at the Kennedy to see how Daneene and Nancy are feeling, the poll workers ask her to take a look at it. The usual tricks just aren’t working.

“Can you say a little prayer over it?” a good- humored poll worker asks Tracy. The ballots aren’t dropping smoothly into the basket below for some reason. Though the problem is irritating, Tracy can’t help but smile at the smartly dressed white-haired woman  presiding over the voting box.

Tracy remembers a similar complaint about another machine at another precinct. The problem is not with the computer. It’s with the cabinet the computer is encased in. After opening the cabinet and doing some realigning, the ballots drop down but not perfectly. The procedure might have to be repeated during the course of the day. It may be a little inconvenient for today’s election, but it will work. Tracy takes a mental note to have the boxes checked by a custodian.

While Tracy is listening to her wardens talk about the problem with the ballots, Gale McHugo raises her on the Nextel phone. It seems the voters from precinct three are still headed to the Blue Hills Chateau restaurant rather than the gym. There is a function there this morning and the patrons of the restaurant are tired of being disrupted by the lost voters and are turning them away.

Tracy now has a more urgent problem on her hands. She knows Daneene and Nancy can take care of the sticking ballot box and so she drives out to the Blue Hills Regional School to find out what’s going on.

Five days earlier the town clerk’s office was told that the Blue Hills Regional School’s Chateau restaurant would not be available on Election Day. It seems a function had been scheduled at the Chateau before the special election date was set by the governor’s office. Precinct three voters, accustomed to going to the Chateau, would have to go to the Blue Hills Regional gym instead.

There was no time to notify voters. It was too late for the weekly papers and Canton Community TV was blown off the air by a windstorm earlier in the week and had yet to come back on. Just days before the election, using telephone notification technology out of the town’s M.I.S. (Management Information Systems) office headed by Louis Jutras, Tracy’s office had been able to call voters in the third precinct directly. However, when the call comes in from Gale on Election Day that there is confusion at precinct three, Tracy is not terribly surprised.

When the town clerk arrives at Blue Hills Regional she likes what she sees. There are plenty of signs pointing voters away from the restaurant and to the gym. She also likes the gym location. There is excellent handicapped access and the gym is plenty big. Still, she’s concerned that voters, despite the signage, are going to the restaurant. Tracy figures voters must be on “automatic pilot.”

She drops in on precinct three warden Wally Gibbs and Tony Pate who tell her that the voters are coming to the gym upset. They say they were rudely dismissed from the Chateau. The town clerk listens to her wardens and then walks to the information booth at the school. After a brief conversation with Mary Kiley, who works out of the superintendent’s office, Tracy is assured that whoever is being impatient with the voters must be a patron of the restaurant — there is a political fundraiser going on there — and that the school will make sure the voters find their way to the gym in a kinder fashion.

Tracy leaves happy with the outcome. She likes the gym as a voting location, but the gym is usually in use during the school day, so when Massachusetts picks a U.S. Senator at the January 19th election, voters in precinct three will be back at the Chateau restaurant.

From Blue Hills Regional, Tracy drives to the Luce School to drop off additional blank ballots. There is plenty of parking because there is no school. After a discussion with the town clerk’s office, Canton’s superintendent moved the schools’ professional day to Election Day, making for far less competition for spaces and far less traffic for elderly and handicapped voters. It’s not always possible to do that, but Tracy comments that it makes parking much easier.

Inside the Luce gym a makeshift barrier made of gymnastic mats has been taped on its side around the tables where the chilled poll workers sit. They are quite content behind the barrier, saying the brilliant idea has made the gym door’s opening and closing much more tolerable. The town clerk talks with the wardens who update her, but they have once again handled the day’s issues so Tracy is free to return to the office.

The town clerk has not put down her purse when Gale tells her a woman said her husband registered to vote with the Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV), but the paperwork never made its way to Canton. The registry gave him a receipt but that was in March and he has no idea where it is now.

Rather than wait for the town clerk’s office to try and confirm with the registry, the voter decided to give up and not vote. He could have taken a “contingency ballot” that would have allowed his vote to count once his registration was confirmed, but had decided against it. Both Gale and Tracy are visibly frustrated with the registry’s system, feeling that this particular error happens too often and that the RMV needs to make improvements in how it communicates with local communities, but this is not a problem that can be resolved today. Tracy sits down. Her old tea is still on the desk. The windows behind her are once again black. The only difference from this morning is that season’s lights that hang on the trees in the parking lot are now on.

Once the polls close, the town clerk’s office can only wait for the boxes and computers to be brought to the Salah Room at Town Hall. Tracy, Gale and Kathy Dever, the senior clerk, see the same wardens from this morning, only this time the wardens and ballots are escorted by police to ensure the integrity of the process.

After the counting is done, Tracy is obligated to call the results in to the Associated Press, a presumed neutral body, who will make the statewide totals available immediately. She will have five days to send her certified tallies to the Election Division of the Secretary of State’s office but the official statewide count will take weeks.

Once Canton’s ballots are counted and the results made public the boxes that contain the ballots are brought down the elevator from the Salah room, escorted by Gale, a police officer and the town clerk. The votes will stay in storage by law for 22 months.

The town clerk’s office will repeat the process all over again on January 19 when the state of Massachusetts chooses its U.S. senator.

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Posted by Canton Citizen on Jan 14 2010. Filed under Features, News, Town Government. Both comments and pings are currently closed.