Hosting The Voters : Democracy Begins at Their Doorstep

What if you gave an open house and the whole neighborhood showed up? Well, a lot of it anyway--say between 200 and 600 people.

That’s what happens to those hardy, civic-minded Southern Californians who open their homes as voting places on Election Day.

About a third of Los Angeles County’s 6,098 polling places will be in private homes this Tuesday. That means Monday will find 2,000 patriotic Angelenos--”poll owners,” as they are called by the registrar of voters--shoving aside sofas, covering carpets, installing voting booths and setting up folding chairs and tables for election officials.

Those who donate their homes for the day are paid $25 by Los Angeles County. They make an additional $60 if they also attend special training classes and work the election. Orange County pays $35 to poll owners.

Who would go through all the work and upheaval of donating their domicile to democracy? And why?

Molly Davis, a 70-year-old widow who lives in Sunland, said that in 25 years of hosting elections, she’s asked herself that question every time.

“Sometimes I wonder why I let these people come in,” she said. “They look the place over, they ruin my carpet. Each year I say ‘Never again, that’s it.’ It’s a lot of work and we only get a few dollars. But then I think, ‘Yeah, but I really enjoy it!’ ”

Davis expects that on Tuesday about 500 people will pass through the modest two-bedroom, one-bath home she’s occupied for the past 43 years.

Like nearly all those who open their doors to voters, Davis also doubles as an election supervisor. She and other officials from her local board of elections are responsible for overseeing the entire process, right down to delivering completed ballots to designated drop-off points at the end of the day.

“I love seeing my neighbors,” Davis explained, “and working with our (election) board. We laugh, we work puzzles, we gossip, it’s fun. We make a day of it!”

She says she usually makes cookies and coffee for the workers and they send out for a pizza at lunch time. “The day before I have to clean up and get ready, I get excited,” laughed Davis, who prepares for the onslaught of the electorate with the help of her grandson.

Most Los Angeles County voters will cast their ballots in a public building of some kind on Tuesday. Lorraine Patterson, head of the Poll Section for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office, said the county turns to private homes because there aren’t enough public and commercial buildings available in every precinct.

Los Angeles County has a “neighborhood voting concept,” Patterson explained. “For each precinct, we try to get a polling place within its boundaries (about one mile square). The whole idea is to keep the polling place close to home, within a four to five block radius.”

But it is hard, and getting harder with each election, Patterson said, to find enough poll homes. Sighing, she quickly ticked off the reasons: “There’s a lot of voter apathy, both spouses work, we don’t pay that much, fear of neighborhood crime, a lot of people don’t want that many people tracking through their homes.”

Those are among the reasons why Keith and Jean White of Temple City are just as glad the polling place was moved from their living room to the local school several years back.

“I would be nervous today,” said Jean. She and her husband, a retired Los Angeles County flood control worker, still work at the polls every Election Day. About 20 years ago they regularly hosted them.

“I wasn’t nervous at that time, we knew the neighbors then, it was old home week. Now they come and go and you just don’t know people.” Jean says at first she and Keith missed the comfort and convenience of working from home. “I used to go and take a nap during a break,” she explained with a laugh.

Acknowledging that increased crime and a more transient lifestyle take their toll on her office’s poll recruitment efforts, Lorraine Patterson said there is an even more frequently cited reason for not becoming a poll owner: “The biggest complaint I hear is: ‘Too many hours, too little pay.’ ”

It’s true those who do it year after year aren’t in it for the money. In fact, 80-year-old Florence Taylor, a widow who lives in South-Central Los Angeles, said she prefers not to think about that part of it.

“I look upon this as something I’m doing for my community,” she said. “If I thought about it as something I get money for, the pay would be too low.”

Taylor acknowledged that “it does sort of take my house apart” to accommodate the voting booths, tables and chairs. Her son comes over ahead of time and moves furniture and sets up the booths. “My house isn’t very large, but I move all the furniture to one end of the living room and put the booths in the dining room. The workers sit in the living room where they can keep an eye on the booths in case someone needs help.”

Taylor says she doesn’t fuss, but “I do make a good pound cake and always have cold drinks. We’re all very neighborly.”

She expects about 300 people will pass through her 900-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath home on Tuesday. And that’s fine with her she says, because she likes people and thinks it’s interesting to sit there and see them all come in. “We used to have a lady that came here from the neighborhood who always used to wear bonnets--interesting bonnets, and they always matched what she was wearing. She wasn’t there for the last election, but I’ll still be expecting her.”

That sense of “neighborliness” and an old-fashioned patriotism, a feeling of obligation to help out with the democratic process seem to be common denominators among those who throw themselves--and their houses--so wholeheartedly into election day.

Many live in homes that are far from spacious and rarely grand. In fact, John Dailey, who has spent the past nine years as a poll recruiter for the L.A. County Registrar’s Office, said most of the people he deals with have houses that are quite modest.

“Some of the most willing and patriotic are in the low income areas,” he said. “They just feel they should do it.”

There is, however, the occasional grand home. Al Duron said the most memorable house he has encountered during eight years as an L.A. County Registrar’s field representative was a 20,000-square foot mansion set on a two-acre estate in La Canada/Flintridge. “It was huge and just beautiful with paintings everywhere,” he said. “In fact, when I went back to resurvey it, there was a film crew there. The lady who owned it was very busy.”

Despite the hard work involved in offering their own homes for elections, many dedicated poll workers were lured into hosting the event because they simply found it more comfortable than the dreary garages or inhospitable offices they had toiled in.

Rose Marder, 81, remembers working elections out of a Wilshire Boulevard automobile dealership more than four decades ago.

“That was a time when we counted everything by hand and we were often there until 3 a.m.,” she said. “But it was inconvenient, we couldn’t even make coffee, and since we worked so late, we wanted something easier.”

“Easier” for Marder means that for the past 30 years she’s risen at 6 a.m. on Election Day to get her house ready for the 7 a.m. poll opening. She says she’s not crazy about getting up that early but waves aside any notion that having 600 people troop through her Beverly Hills home presents any difficulty: “I’ve never found it a hardship.”

Marder pointed out that they are all neighbors who have been coming to her house for years. She laughed, “Every once in a while when the election place is somewhere else, they still show up here because they’re used to it!”

Voters in Nick and Mary Romans’ Orange County precinct had to find their way to a new polling place for last June’s primary election. The Roman garage was a first-time voting site for their Laguna Niguel neighborhood. Nick, 37-year-old news director of radio station KLON in Long Beach, said he was called “out of the blue” by the Orange County registrar’s office and he said yes right away.

“I was curious about what the experience would be like and what you had to do to get organized for a polling place,” he said. “I saw it as kind of research for my work.”

The couple cleared out their garage and put up flags and arrows to make their house, which is tucked into a cul-de-sac, a little easier to find. Neither worked the election, but Roman said he stood around to watch the proceedings before he left for work.

“It was actually a much more mundane process than I expected, rather colorless--you set up booths, tables and ballots. Then you wait.” Roman said the atmosphere of order and quiet was somewhat disappointing. “It was like hosting a library in your garage.”

Come Tuesday, the Roman garage will be just a garage again because the couple has a baby girl and they are unwilling to stay up as late as it takes for the poll workers to finish their work and leave.

Olive Grant who lives in Long Beach is calling it quits too. After hosting elections for 20 years, Grant says the responsibility of closing the poll and then making a late-night run to drop off voted ballots has become a burden.

“I just don’t like driving at night any more and none of the other people on the board do either,” said Grant. “It’s a long, long day. And the end doesn’t come until 10 or 10:30 p.m.” Grant, who is 77 years old, said she has mixed feelings about calling it quits and added that she’s not sure where neighbors in her precinct will cast their ballots if they don’t come to her house.

Wherever they vote, it’s almost certain they’ll miss a unique touch Grant provided. “I have turtles. When some little kid comes in, I check with the parent and take them out back and show them my box turtles and desert tortoises,” she said. “The kids like it, the parents are usually pretty pleased they can concentrate on voting and I like to show off my turtles. Everybody’s happy then.”