Voting day closes in North Long Beach
Sepehr Eftekharian and Allan Chacon, county leads for the voting center at New Philadelphia AME church on Orange Avenue in North Long Beach, formally close the polls -- as they are directed by law to do. Harmony is not required but the two were inspired Monday evening.
Voting was a secure experience in North Long Beach.
Voting centers in North Long Beach sometimes were lonely places during the four-day May-June voting period -- but the process was secure.
A reporter took the 8-hour online and 3-hour in-class Los Angeles County polling center staff classes, much of which covered the multiple layers of protection that guard the voting integrity. He then was assigned to the North Long Beach voting center at New Philadelphia AME church on Orange Avenue at 64th street.
Can someone vote illegally, as many have alleged in recent years ?
It's tough to imagine how at Los Angeles County voting centers, where clerks verify that voters are properly registered and cross-checks, coded zip ties, scans and other security procedures then guard the ballots until they are packed and taken to centers for further checks.
Mohamed Dwaik, a field service technician, patrolled the New Philadelphia voting center all day for the four voting days, monitoring and checking the 15 voting machines at the church Hall, which had been transformed into one of the approximately 650 voting centers in Los Angeles County.
County staffers above the New Philadelphia voting center leads Allan Chacon and Sepehr Eftekharian came frequently to inspect, check and consult.
Some challenges were unexpected.
Someone, a voter perhaps, apparently ran over one of the plastic orange cones marking the handicapped voter parking in front of Butler Hall on Orange Avenue and then drove off with the cone lodged in the undercarriage of the car. The voting center had no spares cones to marke handiapped parking so Chacon went looking for ithe wayward one, finding it later about a mile away on the side of Artesia Boulevard, smudged from being dragged on the road but still serviceable. He brought it back and returned it to duty.
For some, voting clearly was a social activity. They met friends, chatted with voting staff and handed their phones to a voting center greeter to have their pictures taken in front of the center.
In all, about 500 people voted at the Orange Avenue center, either using the electronic voting stations -- each costing about $4,000 -- or deposited their completed ballots in a sealed collection bin. By far, the majority of voters came in the later afternoon and early evening hours Tuesday, three barely making it before the center closed.
Jeff Rowe/for Long Beach Vibe, jfrowe@rocketmail.com
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