ELECTION NIGHT ESCAPADES

Our Voter Integrity Election volunteer leader, Jean Follmer, gave us specific instructions on what to do and look for on Primary night to see if the Voter Ballot box was being protected and locked at the appropriate time.

A Republican friend and I, (Rachel) both members of LRWF, chose to observe the box located at the Election/Registrar’s office on 555 Escobar Street in downtown Martinez.

Jean’s instructions said to stay in the car, park 100 feet away, bring notepad and pen, don’t engage with anyone and get there by 7:30 to 7:45 PM and stay to at least 8:15 or 8:30PM.

Well, when we saw a parking space right in front of the lighted County building at 7:44pm, we thought “why not park here?” There were two Policemen or Rent a Security Guardsmen, (could only see a gold badge on each but couldn’t read it) standing outside in front of the building and they were watching us! (Supposed to be the other way around....)

Remembering that Jean said to park 100 feet away and we were right under their noses, we drove out of the parking lot and parked across the street, but the Ballot box was still in full view.

We only saw a few cars dropping off ballots, but could see activity inside the building; a large camera on top of a tri-pod was in the lobby and it looked like a newsman was attending to it, but we did not go inside. I got out of the car just to take a good look at the Ballot box.

Then, around 7:57pm a woman came out of the building waving a sheet of paper. A couple minutes later she went inside. I got out of the car again to see if box was locked, and the sheet of paper was actually posted on the Ballot Box stating in large black letters “Voting Closed”- I took a picture, believe the time was 8:00 to 8:01 PM and sent it to Jean. I walked past a man coming out of the building smiling and saying hello, but I ran back in to my car, not supposed to engage…….

Afterwards, Rachel and I were laughing at how lousy we were at being sleuths, not bringing attention upon oneself is harder than it appears. But, to make it an even more memorable evening, we went around the block and had some Mexican dinner at 8:30 pm, closing down the restaurant.

P.J. Mayer