This year, I decided to approach the polls from a new perspective. I volunteered to work as an equipment manager.

If I did something wrong, I could disenfranchise a whole precinct of voters.

Media hypothesize about voters’ decisions. They dedicate time and money to discovering trends. After ballots have been counted, they theorize and speculate about specific reasons why one candidate beat the other and what swayed voters. Ever since my experience at the polls on Feb. 5, I can only find media’s generalities to be amusing. The only trends I witnessed at the polls were confusion, uncertainty and in-the moment decisions.

I have voted in every election since I turned 18. That statement loses most of its weight when I mention that I am now 22-years-old, but I am committed to the election process.

Feb. 2, I attended equipment manager training sessions.

At 9 a.m. sharp, I arrived at Trackside, Arlington Park Racetrack’s off-track betting building located in Arlington Heights, Ill. About 70 people were already assembled. The majority of the people were college students.

They handed me a 200-page election judge manual and a 72-page folder of point-by-point instructions for equipment managers. Dread washed over me when they said only one equipment manager would be at each precinct and we would be responsible for setting up, maintaining and taking down all optical scanners that count paper ballots, touchscreens for computerized voting and touchscreen card activators.

We were also in charge of uploading and transmitting all votes to the Cook County Clerk at the end of the day.

We separated into breakout sessions and instructors used the equipment to take us through every step from setup to close.

After eight hours of training, two written tests and two hands-on tests; I passed. I crossed my fingers, grabbed my instruction booklets and I headed home.

At 3 p.m. Monday Feb. 4, I was assigned to a precinct. By 5:30 p.m., I was already there to set up.

I walked into a room of eight senior citizens. They were clamoring about and shouting back and forth. Equipment and papers littered the room. It was mayhem.

They were neighbors and seasoned poll workers; so, they proceeded to playfully gang up on me, the young newcomer, for the next couple of hours.

I wondered what 16 hours with them tomorrow be like.

My alarm clock rang at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 5. I was up (ate a banana and scrambled egg) and headed out aiming to arrive at 5 a.m.

I plugged the machines in and booted them up. Everything was in perfect running order.

At 6 a.m., I flipped the switches on the touchscreens to "open" and Super Tuesday voting began. Five people immediately walked in and we had a constant stream for the rest of the day.

The precinct was relatively small with 502 registered voters. The election judges were Joan Kuhn, Helen Johnson, and husband and wife James and Donalda Shirmer.

The judges contributed a feeling of warmth and community to the polls. People who walked in were their neighbors, fellow parishioners or friends of their children. They would often tear a voter’s name out of the registered voter’s booklet before the person even reached our table.

Kuhn has lived in Rolling Meadows since 1960 and first worked at the polls in 1964. She has been an election judge on and off ever since.

The first time she voted, at 21-years-old, she said she used a curtained voting booth. The voter would pull a lever to close a curtain around them and press other levers to vote for each candidate. The original lever was pushed back to cast the vote and open the curtain.

"I got stuck!" Kuhn said. "The lever wouldn’t move and I got scared. I was about to crawl out from under but they said ‘No! No! No! If you leave you lose your vote!’ They were finally able to get me out."

Johnson moved to Rolling Meadows in 1962 and has worked at the polls since 1970.

"We used to count ballots until 2 a.m.," Johnson said. "People would call out the results and we’d tally. They only paid us $25 for all our work back then."

The Shirmers became residents of Rolling Meadows in 1960. They are more recent to the election judge process. They joined the precinct in 2000.

Donalda Shirmer, however, is following in her mother’s footsteps.

"My mother was a stay-at-home mom," she said. "The day she worked at the polls was the best day of her year because she would go hang out with the women and be away from home for a change. They would get a nice lunch and stay out until 2 a.m. counting the ballots. She loved it. For her, it was independence."

As election judges in Cook Country, we were not allowed to ask voters whether they were Republicans or Democrats. We would look their name up to see if they were registered, have them sign after verifying their home address and then check "Democrat," "Republican" or "Green." "Independent" and "Non-partisan" were also options but could not be checked because there are no ballots to go with those choices in a presidential primary.

Although we were required to be secretive about voter’s political choices, it was compulsory for us to wear nametags that stated which party we belonged to in big letters above our names. (After having my party plastered on my chest for 16 hours, I’m going to retain my right to conceal what my card said for now.)

Some Independent and Non-partisan voters were thrown off when we told them they had to choose a party on that day.

"I usually just vote across the aisle for whomever I feel seems right at the moment," one woman said.

I witnessed many people making split second decisions. About 30 people had trouble deciding which box to check. Several people asked me whether they should vote Democratic or Republican. Some even wanted candidate suggestions.

"I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to help you," I stammered each time.

There seemed to be confusion about party identity. Many people would stare at the boxes, almost check Republican and go with Democratic, or vice versa.

Even among our group we had uncertainty about the primaries. The day began with three Republicans and two Democrats. Two election judges had been quietly arguing their choice for a Republican presidential nominee on and off throughout the day while voters were not present.

They batted the candidates back and forth. Then in a split second decision one said:

"Let’s vote Democratic!"

Before they could change their minds, both demanded activated cards. They went to the touchscreens and voted for a Democratic presidential nominee.

One voter whispered under her breath that she was a Republican voting on a Democratic ballot for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama because she was afraid of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton winning.

"I’m voting Obama," another voter said. "My wife is voting for Clinton. We are canceling out each other’s votes. I wondered if I should even come."

The phrase of the day, that became old after the first five voters that said it, was: "Vote early vote often!" A dozen times later, I couldn’t help but cringe. One man used it very cleverly though. He finished voting and turned to wave goodbye.

"I’ll be back to vote later!" he yelled.

Another woman hollered over to us after she cast her vote:

"I didn’t know who to vote for after I voted for the primaries; so, I just voted for all the women!"

"I done! Finish test, no?" a delightfully friendly Hispanic woman said after she voted. "You all make good Republicans now!"

The majority of the voters were elderly. James Shirmer repeatedly commented on the large number of elderly voters between the ages of 70 and 100 that came to the precincts.

"I’ve seen a lot of walkers today, if you know what I mean," he joked.

The election judges were enlivened to see young voters turning out.

"Hi! Here’s a sticker! Thanks so much for voting!" would be the general reaction to young voters.

"Oh, I love seeing young people vote. It’s so wonderful!" would be the words echoing throughout the room as soon as the youth exited.

I activated cards for touchscreens most of the day. It was a process of inserting a card; punching in the correct code for Democrat, Republican or Green Party; listening for several beeps and handing it to the voter with the statement: "Do not pull the card out before the screen says ‘Thank you’ or your vote will not be counted."

Only one person did not heed my warning. Early in the day, after a few voters had come and gone, I noticed that one of my touchscreens showed an error message. A card had been pulled out too early and the voter left without alerting us. I problem-solved and got everything back up to par but felt terrible that their vote was lost.

We recorded the incident in the log as "voter fled."

When James Shirmer went to vote on a touchscreen, he passed his hand over the screen in an upward motion and brushed the button for "Spanish" instead of "English." He didn’t know that I could easily reset it, so he voted the entire ballot in Spanish.

Unlike many other precincts, we were soft on our voters who preferred paper.

"Paper or plastic?" we would playfully ask.

The precinct sharing a room with ours razzed people for being old fashioned and not willing to try something new if they chose paper. We still had a few who were actually fearful of the computerized versions.

"I don’t trust that computer device that loses votes," a man around 40-years-old said. "Yeah, they say those are secure but we know all about that. Only paper for me!"

Little did he know, paper and touchscreen voting are essentially the same. Both methods have a paper trail, register votes electronically and results are uploaded from electronic storage devices at the end of the day.

During the course of the day, we were visited by a Cook County Clerk elections monitor. She was in her early 20s and very zealous about her job.

"I know you’re all going to hate me, but your ballot boxes should be turned to the wall," she declared in a perky tone.

We had all the touchscreens and paper ballot stands facing inward to the middle of the room.

We all stared at her blankly.

"The room is too small to turn them out," Kuhn replied.

"Well, you’re gonna have to turn them anyway. If the media comes in here, we’ll be in big trouble," she said.

We did her bidding. It was a disaster. We were beginning our post-work rush. Trying to move booths around people who were currently voting was distracting and invasive. The legs on the paper ballot booths are not secured so they kept crashing to the floor. Their tin frames bounced, clanged and clashed.

After everything was reorganized, the voters had to squeeze behind the voting booths with their backs up to the wall and ankle high in electrical wires.

The election judges were indignant. They could not believe that the little college girl was altering their routine, and endangering their friends and neighbors.

"If OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] saw this then we would really be in trouble. This is not safe," Kuhn and Johnson kept repeating.

It was an interesting moment; a generational clash. One person was trying to complete a fair election by following rules. The others were fulfilling a time-honored tradition they had observed for decades. The polls had seemed like a community event before the monitor arrived. Now, it seemed cold, closed off and secretive.

We closed the polls at 7 p.m. One man arrived 10 minutes too late.

"I’ve never missed an election in my life," he said despairingly. "I can’t believe I didn’t get this. Who does this? Who does the counting? Can’t I just vote on the paper ballot? Are community members counting this?"

I stared at him with a puzzled look on my face. Community members haven’t counted ballots in years. For a man who votes in every election, he didn’t know much about the process. He lingered on hoping to pull at our heart strings and repeating his mantra. I could not make him leave.

"He should not be in here. The polls are closed," someone from the other precinct finally said. "Get him out of here!"

I closed out the touchscreens and optical scanner. Then I took the electronic storage devices uploaded their information into the touchscreen card activator and transmitted it from that device to the Cook County Clerk. We then tried to correctly file records, ballots, receipts, voter documents and other papers in envelopes marked "303," "601," "602," "603," "604," "605" "606," "607" and "608."

Everything had to be signed by all of us. I hadn’t signed my name so often since yearbooks were handed out in high school.

Of 502 people registered in our precinct, 175 voted. According to Donalda Shirmer, the turnout was fantastic for a primary.

The Shirmers and I took everything in a blue duffle bag down to a drop-off point at the Rolling Meadows Courthouse. When we drove up, it was like the blue duffle bag army. There were about 15 precincts waiting in front of us. The second we were done, we looked back to see the room packed with hundreds of people. We couldn’t even get out of the doors without pushing through crowds.

Working at the polls taught me to have more faith in the system.

The Cook County Clerk keeps election judges accountable with documentation, instructions and tamper-proof seals on all equipment. The machines were reliable as well. It was the uniformed, "I’ll go with my gut feeling" voters who made me think twice about the system. It was quite a learning experience.

(Oh, and did I mention I earned $500?)