Friday, November 08, 2002

Supposedly, poll workers must meet three requirements to work on election day in Los Angeles County: They must be citizens of the United States, registered voters and at least 18 years old. To my knowledge, none of these requirements was ever checked in my case. During the training class, the speaker reiterated these stipulations, prompting a woman in her 40s to call out from the back of the room that her 13-year-old son had worked during the gubernatorial primaries in March. "He must have been a great helper and volunteer!" the trainer responded."No, my son got paid by the county!" the woman exclaimed. Given the desperate need for bilingual poll workers -- and poll workers in general -- in a city as geographically massive and linguistically diverse as Los Angeles, the country registrar appears not averse to letting some requirements fall by the wayside.