Back From Election Camp

I'm facing a re-entry back at the office tomorrow after being out of town for a full week in election-related meetings.

I blogged about the first meeting, the ES&S National Advisory Board.  The second half of the trip was primary a review of election-related legislation.

Real work awaits as we are only 8 days away from filing deadline for the spring elections.  That Tuesday, Jan. 22, also will be the first day everyone is back in our office at the same time since Dec. 6.

That's the result of the holidays, some travel, and many staff members catching up on personal things that were put on hold for most of 2012--everything from surgeries to car repairs to parent/teacher conferences, and everything in between.

I also expect tomorrow's staff meeting, when most of us will gather, will be the first chance we've had since January 1 to talk through learnings of the new legal requirements that went into effect this year involving citizenship.  New registrants must provide proof of citizenship and, in fact, we have to make a copy of this proof and attach it to the voter's record.

That will have downstream impacts regarding scanners and scanning time, as well as copying.  We have to preserve the confidentiality of these citizenship documents, so the copier we use will not have any kind of hard drive that records copies.  We also have a dream of creating a self-serve computer kiosk that will allow registrants to upload the information directly at our office, but we don't yet have that developed.

For now, I'm starving for routine, which elections are very good at providing.  As mundane as that previous paragraph may have been to read, it was nearly joyous to type.

I did have one major learning from last week's meetings that I'll share in a post early next week.  For now, if you can't get enough election geekdom, you might want to begin also checking out a new blog by Scott Konopasek.

I don't know that I've ever met a nicer or smarter man than Scott, and I think he will do great things to advance the thought leadership of this profession.

Back in touch after enjoying the incredibly boring drive to my office tomorrow, which I will greet as though I'm sailing along a double rainbow.