Meet the ... Poll workers enjoy meeting new people

PNT staff writer

[email protected]

The Portales City Council municipal elections will be 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 4 at the Memorial Building, but for the ones working the polls they have to devote their whole day to it.

The poll workers of the municipal election are asked to work on election day and have to be registered voters, said Joan Martinez-Terry, city clerk.

“They have to stay all day and they can’t leave the polls at all. They have to come in at 6 a.m. and maybe get to leave at 8 p.m. The longest we had to stay after an election was 10:30 p.m.,” Martinez-Terry said.

The workers also have to go to an election school for training, which is at city hall.

The city usually looks for people who have worked the polls before, but Joe Perry, retired from working in the street department for Portales, volunteered for the first time.

“I do not know what to expect, but I want to help out,” Perry said.

Perry was asked by Veda Urioste, deputy city clerk, and thought it would be a good thing to do. Jennifer Size said she believed that as well as when she started 17 years ago for the county and six years ago for the city.

Size is a helper at the New Mexico Children’s Home and finds working at the polls fun and enjoyable.

“I get to meet a lot of people when I work at the polls,” Size said.

Size said there are some difficulties she has faced when she has worked at the polls. Her first year working the polls, a race was decided by only five or six votes.

The losing opponent called for a recount, so Size and her fellow poll workers had to count the votes in front of many people.

Size also said one year the mailed in votes were fed into the machine that counts the votes. The papers were ripped in half while going into the machine and staff had to hand count the votes.

Even though there are difficulties, Size said she still enjoys working.

“I get to hang out with the other workers and get to see the voters come out and it is a lot of fun,” Size said.

Olympia Chino’s mother would tell her how she enjoyed working at the polls in Clovis. This year Chino will be following in her mother’s footsteps for the first time.

Chino is retired from being a department secretary at Eastern New Mexico University and knows the Eastern community.

“I am not that familiar with the Portales community and I think I will meet more people work at the poll,” Chino said.

Chino said she wanted to help the community more and do her duty as a citizen.

“I am a people person and I am ready to meet new people,” Chino said.