Cranston resident Tom Rotella manages the website of a software company. But on Election Day, he works the polls.
Rotella remembers his first day on the job back in 2014.
“I remember it being cold, and showing up early in the morning, it’s still dark out, and being a little nervous because I’ve never done it before. And I went through training, but you’re still unsure of stuff,” he said.
Since then, he’s gotten more comfortable with the job. And in 2016, he worked at polling place in Cranston that was one of the first to test out electronic poll pads, a new system to check voters in.
As Rotella explains, the electronic poll pads are touchscreen tablets.
“It’s essentially just an iPad, and it has a custom-built application that’s loaded on it. And the application is linked into a database and everything is synched together in the cloud,” Rotella said.
And that’s how every voter will be checked in this year. Forget about those long lists of names on paper. Now it’s an iPad with a camera that scans your ID.
Approximately 1,500 of these electronic poll pads are being deployed across the state.
“It’s essentially just an iPad, and it has a custom-built application that’s loaded on it.”
This system is meant to help poll workers check voters in quickly, but it also raises some concerns. Syncing all that voter data in the cloud means poll workers now have to think about cybersecurity.
Miguel Nunez is Deputy Director of Elections at the Rhode Island Board of Elections. He said the Rhode Island National Guard’s cybersecurity team reviewed the poll pad system and made several recommendations on how to keep voter data safe.
“Part of the recommendations from the Guard was simply that we change the password for every election and make that password more complex and more difficult to penetrate,” Nunez said.
Beefing up the password can create new challenges for poll workers.
Common Cause Rhode Island sends dozens of volunteers out to monitor the polls each election. Executive Director John Marion noticed new passwords caused delays during the primary.
“For instance, my polling place opened late, and the reason was that they’ve beefed up the password. To start the machine up in the morning have to enter a password,” Marion said. “The poll worker wasn’t able to enter the password because they didn’t understand what the shift key was to get to the character. And so, as we start think about cybersecurity, the burden on the poll worker increases.”
“A poll worker used to be essentially someone who just checked in voters and handed them ballots.”
Poll workers are the front lines of election administration, Marion said. They work long days for little pay. Plus, they’re the election officials with the least preparation for the job.
Political scientist Barry Burden said this is a nationwide issue. Burden runs the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin. He said all over the country poll workers’ responsibilities are growing, especially when it comes to technology.
“A poll worker used to be essentially someone who just checked in voters and handed them ballots. Now it’s also a security job, checking IDs, and maintaining the security of machines and ballots. It’s also an information technology job to some degree, manning machines, rebooting them when they fail,” he said.
Here in Rhode Island, Cranston poll worker Tom Rotella is helping train poll workers to use the electronic poll pads. At a recent training, Rotella walked poll workers through the set-up of the devices.
Rotella said, for some of his trainees, using the tablets can take some practice.
“In general, it’s mostly an older crowd that’s working the polls and, so that can sometimes be challenging when trying to teach the supervisors to use this newer technology, because a lot of them have never used a touchscreen device even,” Rotella said.
But Rotella said the electronic poll pads were a success in the recent primaries. And he thinks Election Day will go smoothly.
“I think it went well for the primary and those people who have used it, they’ll jump in, they’ll be comfortable, it won’t be a problem,” he said.
But Megan Khatchadourian of the Rhode Island ACLU warns that high turnout during the general election might create problems that didn’t come up during the primary.
“The electronic poll books I don’t think have been tested at high capacity or larger turnout events. So, we didn’t see any issues necessarily during the primaries, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be technological issues and possible user error as well,” she said.
“I think it went well for the primary and those people who have used it, they’ll jump in, they’ll be comfortable, it won’t be a problem.”
One worry is that the new technology will limit access to voting.
For example, the poll pads can only scan drivers’ licenses and state IDs. But Rhode Island law says voters can use other forms of ID. Even without photo ID, voters can get a provisional ballot.
Khatchadourian is worried that poll workers might turn people away if they don’t have a scannable ID.
“The thing we’re looking for, for poll workers, is making sure that they really do understand the information that’s been presented to them at their training, so that they aren’t inadvertently disenfranchising somebody,” Khatchadourian said.
Back at the poll worker training in Cranston, Board of Canvassers Registrar Nick Lima swears his new team into their role:
“So, if you all could please raise your right hand,” Lima said. “Do you attest to faithfully execute the office of election official and will, to the best of your ability, preserve, protect, and defend, the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Rhode Island, and all the election laws and rights of the people thereof? [group: I do.] Congratulations, you’re all now married to the state.”
After an hour and a half of training and a quick test, they’re ready to work the polls on Election Day.
