For poll workers, the end of an era
Dolores Pearson is getting fired. And she doesn’t mind it a bit.
Two decades working King County elections has taken its toll, and the 72-year-old is ready to retire.
“I won’t miss it,” she said. “I like work, but I just like retiring. I just don’t want to do it anymore.”
For the hundreds of King County election workers, today likely will be their swan song - the last big election until the county goes to all-mail ballots next year.
The elections office even has a name for it: “final casting call.”
The county assumes its vendor will have the election equipment necessary to switch to all-mail elections next year, as most counties in the state already have done.
There still will be poll workers at the Feb. 19 presidential primary, as well as the March, April and May special elections that will be held if jurisdictions request them.
The state Democratic Party has said it will ignore the results of the presidential primary and instead choose its 80 elected delegates through precinct caucuses.
Pearson, a former teacher, bookstore worker and part-time seamstress, said she began working elections when she saw a sign-up sheet at her polling place. Now she’s an elections “inspector,” which involves getting all the ballots ready at her polling place at the Calvary Christian Assembly Church in the Roosevelt neighborhood.
“It’s working with people and I really enjoyed it, so I kept it up,” said Pearson, who would bring a pillow to her polling place to provide padding on the cold metal chairs.
She was visiting family in California after Sept. 11, when airplanes were grounded, and the King County elections office figured she wouldn’t get back to work the primary election, so it put someone else in her spot.
She called the airlines every day and did get back in time to work her shift.
A Montana native, Pearson has lived in Seattle since 1959, except for several years when she taught school in Port Angeles.
Today, she makes dresses and writes in a journal every morning. She’s chronicled her years working elections and recalls the day in 2000 when a voter showed up at her polling place in an ambulance, wanting to vote before she had surgery.
The voter was so weak, Pearson said, all she could do was mark an X on the ballot, and poll workers had to finish filling it in for her.
She talks about poll workers who would leave for lunch and not come back, or about the man who fell asleep at his table. Once, a voter left a note saying voting shouldn’t be allowed at a church because it violated the separation of church and state.
She also fielded complaints from voters who didn’t like to have to choose a party ballot when voting in a primary.
“I told them it was court-mandated and we didn’t record them,” she said. “One voter tore up his ballot.”
While Pearson said she won’t miss working Election Day, she will miss voting at a polling place. She would often be recognized in her Lake City neighborhood by those who remembered her as a poll worker.
“I don’t like all-mail elections,” she said. “In a mechanized society less people are involved and I’ll miss the interaction with neighbors. It’s the end of an era.”
Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054
or sgilmore@seattletimes.com