Society and public life

Directions for this passage: Numbered portions are marked [n]…[/n] (underlined on paper, highlighted online). Each numbered portion matches the question with the same number. Paragraphs are numbered for reference.

A Long Day at Table Three

Paragraph 1 At 5:45 on a dark November morning, I followed my partner through a side door of the Linden Park Recreation Center in the town of Pell River and helped her switch on the gym lights. I was nineteen, and it was my first day as a poll worker. Of the two volunteers assigned to Table Three, I was [1]the youngest[/1] by more than forty years; my partner, Dolores Whitcomb, had worked every election in Pell River since 1983.

Paragraph 2 Our job was to check in voters. [2]When someone reached our table[/2] Dolores or I found the person’s name in a thick binder of registered voters, asked the voter to sign beside it, and handed over a ballot. The county’s rules for our table fit on a single laminated card, but Dolores knew them by heart. She was also responsible [3]to keep[/3] a count of every ballot we handed out, and each hour she checked her count against the signatures in the binder.

Paragraph 3 The polls opened at 7:00. By 7:30, [4]a line of voters in work boots, hospital scrubs, and bright orange road-crew vests stretched past the trophy case and out the front door[/4]. Several people apologized for having only a few minutes before their shifts began, and one man signed the binder with a sleeping toddler draped over his shoulder.

Paragraph 4 Around noon, a woman arrived whose name was not in the binder. She told us she had moved to Carver Road in the spring and had updated her address at the county office. I braced for an argument, but Dolores calmly explained the rule: a voter whose name is missing may still cast a provisional ballot, and the county requires that each provisional ballot [5]is sealed[/5] in a separate yellow envelope until officials confirm the voter’s registration. The woman filled out the form, sealed her envelope, and thanked us on her way out.

Paragraph 5 The polls closed at 8:00 p.m. Dolores and I counted the unused ballots twice, and the total matched her hourly counts exactly. As we locked the side door behind us, she asked whether I planned to come back for the spring election. I told her I had already written the date on my calendar.