Warwarsing election inspector Ruth Ann Kelly has been verifying signatures and overseeing voting machines for about seven years. Usually, she gets paid for her service one or two weeks after Election Day.

This year is different. With the holiday season nearly upon us, Ms. Kelly, along with several hundred other inspectors who count our votes county-wide, still have not received their paycheck. Working a primary, a general election, and attending paid training amounts to about roughly $400 per year.

In previous years, each town handled their own elections directly. "Now, the county's taken it over, and it's all screwed up," Kelly said. "I called the Board of Elections (BOE), and they said they decided they're only going to cut one check after the general election."

The pay owed comes to $150 for the primary; $200 for the general election; and $25 plus mileage for mandatory training completed in August. The compensation offered represents roughly a 25% increase over previous years. Kelly claims that the training pay is now being reneged, and has written documentation to prove her case. "I don't think they know what they're doing up there," she complained, adding that she doesn't intend to be a temporary election worker in the future. "A lot of us are not coming back."

Election inspectors are the people who check signatures against the voter rolls when citizens come to vote at the polls. Inspectors also manage the voting machines and help count the votes later on. Inspectors differ from "poll watchers," who are unpaid members of political parties that hang around the voting place, to make sure no illegal shenanigans are being committed by the inspectors. Both the inspectors and the poll-watchers, however, are chosen to serve by the political parties, rather than the government.

New York's election system is run by the two major political parties, as dictated by Election Law. At the top of the pyramid is the state Board of Elections, followed by individual county BOEs, each of which have two commissioners: one Republican, and one Democrat. In Ulster County, an election commissioner makes $63,500 per year. It would take an ordinary worker at the polls three centuries of general elections (not including primaries) to earn the same amount of money. According to Tom Turco, Ulster County's Republican elections commissioner, Ms. Kelly will be receiving her paycheck around the same time she'll be reading this article. The problem was the result of bureaucratic red tape caused by new federal laws and Homeland Security guidelines.

"As you know, the process of election personnel, whether they be inspectors, or custodians, all fell to the jurisdiction of the county boards, with the implementation of HAVA," Turco explained, referring to the Helping America Vote Act of 2002. "It became a necessity... to make every election worker a county employee."

Whereas previously a town clerk would cut a check by way of voucher, an entirely new method of management and compensation was utilized in the 2006 election cycle. One major roadblock to the inspectors getting paid in a timely fashion is a Homeland Security mandate for proof of citizenship using a federal I-9 form. Local officials did not learn about this issue until September. Turco said, "If we had known this all along, we would have gathered that information during the [August training] classes."

"So we did a mass collection of I-9s on election day, as well as thereafter. In fact we are still getting some I-9s from certain people who did not have the proper IDs," Turco noted. "Through this whole process, which was a learning curve for us, we have completed probably over 90% of our personnel now. And, their checks will be issued this week."

The good news is that next year, the election people will all be paid on time. "It'll be much quicker next year," Turco assured. "Anyone working next year doesn't even have to fill out an I-9, and anyone new coming into personnel, whether a custodian or an inspector, we will be having those forms filled out during our classes." The rationale behind mandatory county-level centralization of election management, under HAVA, mostly concerns the new electronic voting machines which will be replacing older mechanical machines.

In New York, this innovation has been delayed until the 2007 election cycle. Officials at the state level were required to have electronic machines in place by 2006, but balked in order to assure that these devices all had a paper trail; that is, the ability to conduct a recount. The US Dept. of Justice sued New York State over this delay, and settled out of court.

It has been widely reported in the national media that many states currently feature electronic voting machines that cannot produce any paper trail, making an official recount impossible. Usually when a recount is done, the result is never exactly the same, whether mechanical or computerized. Disparities in the count can come from error, defect, or fraud. Next November, all voting machines in New York State will be electronic, and all will produce a paper record to allow a proper recount. Several different vendors have been certified, and each county BOE will decide for themselves which brand of machine will be purchased.

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