BATH

For most people, voting is pretty easy: you find your polling place, receive a ballot, and fill it out before placing it in the ballot box — or in some sort of fancy vote tallying machine.

What most people don’t realize is that there is a massive amount of work going on behind the scenes to make that process as painless as possible for voters.

Mary White, Bath’s city clerk, is the person who makes the magic happen. White is in charge of preparing for the Nov. 8 election, overseeing absentee voting and coordinating all the work to make an election run seamlessly.

“We just do it,” said White with a smile, when asked how her office prepares for an election on top of their regular duties.

This year, White and her staff are encouraging residents to vote early with absentee ballots in order to reduce the number of people voting on Election Day. With several statewide referendum questions, one municipal ballot question and a number of candidates for local, state and federal office, filling out a ballot might take longer than most years. White hopes that absentee voting can reduce pressure at the city’s only polling place on Nov. 8 and keep wait times under an hour.

“Usually we have maybe 2,000 voters if we’re lucky. This year we’ll go over 5,000,” said White.

Presidential elections always bring a large crowd. Overseas voters, college students and a number of other residents often skip the non-presidential elections, said White, but she expects them to vote in droves this year.

Absentee voting officially started in Bath this week, but for White and her staff, the election process has been underway for nearly two months. Starting in mid- August, White began preparing school ballots, various inserts and state ballots so that everything would be ready to go when absentee voting began.

“Once we got the ballots, we started putting the inserts with the ballots so everything is ready, we just pop them in and here we go. I mean, that’s the only thing you can do — you set it up and you hope that it’s going to go through quickly,” said White.

It’s important for White’s team to have the various ballots and inserts ready to go early, because Bath’s municipal ballot is one of the last ones printed in the state. Since Bath’s nomination process continues late into September, the city clerk only has a couple weeks to get the municipal ballots printed and prepped to go out to voters.

“Last week we were putting out 250 ballots a day,” said White.

Just from Tuesday’s voting, White had two sizable stacks of ballots to process. As Election Day approaches, she expects more ballots to come through from in-person voters as well as mail-in voters. She asks, however, that Bath voters get their absentee ballots into the clerk’s office sooner rather than later.

“I’m hoping that everybody gets their ballots back quickly,” said White. “Please, please get them back long before Election Day so that we can get them processed.”

Every single ballot that can be filled out and processed before Election Day is one less thing that White and her staff have to worry about. Absentee ballots that are returned in a timely manner will be put through a voting machine the day before the election, but late ballots will have to be tallied after voting concludes at 8 p.m. on Nov. 8. While early absentee voting saves officials time on Election Day, absentee ballots that come in just before deadline add to the work her staff has to do that day. That can delay voting results by hours.

While White and her two staff members, Pam Gray and Beth Haskell, work hard for weeks on end to make Bath’s elections a smooth process, there’s no way they could do it alone. Throughout early absentee voting, election clerks come in to oversee voting and the ballot box, and on Election Day more than 40 people come in to help work the polls. Many of these election workers have been with White for around 16 years, what she refers to as her “olbies.”

“These people are absolutely the best people in the world. I mean, they are dedicated to what they do and they’re dedicated to this city,” said White. “I could not do this if I didn’t have the excellent support team that I have.”

Indeed, White notes that in the last three recounts the city had to conduct, her staff ’s initial tally perfectly matched the second tally.

White stressed that there a few things voters should be aware of before coming to the polls. First off, any Bath residents who’ve changed their name or address should come to the clerk’s office to update their voter registration to be able to vote — be sure to bring a photo ID and proof of address. The clerk’s office will be open for registration 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 5-7 p.m. on Oct. 24.

White is also still looking for poll workers. Those interested in voting absentee can request a ballot from the city clerk’s office or go down to City Hall to fill one out.

nstrout@timesrecord.com