Progress-Index 2023 Newsmaker: Gwen Terreforte makes sure absentee ballots are counted

An average election day for Gwendolyn Terreforte and her team often starts at 5 a.m. and can last well into the next morning.

Regardless of the long hours outside of a full-time job working for the state of Virginia, Terreforte wouldn’t change a thing.

“I just fell in love with it and I’m very passionate about what I do,” she said. “It’s something that, even when I retire, I can see that I’ll probably give more time to do more with voter registration.”

Now a chief judge of the central absentee precinct in Petersburg, Terreforte began her foray into elections work as a volunteer poll worker in 1986. At the time, she worked as an editorial assistant at the Richmond News Leader, where management encouraged staff to get involved in civic affairs.

The first polling place she worked was at Christ and Grace Church. During first three presidential elections that she volunteered for, she and her colleagues didn’t leave the precinct until 3 a.m. after election day.

“You have to like what you do and be passionate about it because, if you get there at 5 o’clock in the morning and you’re still there at 3 o’clock the next morning on some of the election days, you have to finish what you started and you have to do it correctly and properly,” she said.

Petersburg's voter registrar, Dawn Wilmoth, agreed with Terreforte.

"Gwen is level headed, and is not easily shaken which also makes her a great asset under pressure and duress," Wilmoth said. "These are trying positions at times and often it is said a very thankless job. It has to be in your gut conscious of convictions to demand clarity, accuracy and transparency in the election process."

Still active in elections 37 years later, Terreforte hopes to pass that love of civic engagement on to her children and grandchildren, just as her father, who worked the polls in Dinwiddie, did for her.

“I really enjoy the fact that he too gave back to the community,” she said.

The human engagement and tech behind counting and 'curing' absentee ballots

Terreforte has seen a three-fold increase of absentee ballots come through her precinct since the COVID-19 pandemic made the option more available to voters. Thankfully, technology has also advanced since 1986 to allow for a quicker, more efficient process. Now, the precinct uses electronic poll books and machines to help count the ballots, compared to paper rolls and hand counting.

Electronic poll books are laptops, tablets, or kiosks designed to replace paper poll lists, that access digital voter registration records for their representative jurisdiction, according to the United States Election Assistance Commission. The machines used to count the ballots are transportable DS200's - imagine a 64-gallon trashcan on four wheels with a computer screen that pops out when the lid is lifted up.

Her busy time starts in mid-September when she’ll come in to work as a volunteer in the evenings after her day job. By mid-October, she adds on weekend hours to that stint, as the number of absentee ballots received by her office increases as the election draws near.

She checks for absentee ballots that have come in through the mail or through the drop box at the start of her shift. She ensures the outer envelope of each ballot has every necessary piece of information from the voter. If anything is missing, she starts a process called “curing” the ballot. She’ll call the voter and let them know that information is missing and will ask them to come down to the central absentee precinct to remedy to issue. Voters have up until provision ballots are counted to provide missing information.

“We try our best to save every vote as humanly possible,” she said.

That process goes on up through election day, and a specific pre-process date is set, usually on a Saturday or before the election, when absentee ballots are inserted into the machines. Both Republican and Democratic parties are notified of that date so that a designated observer can watch the process. Observers must present an official letter from their political party to do so.

During pre-processing of the absentee ballots, Terreforte will call out the name listed on each ballot envelope and announce whether it has all the information required to be considered valid before it is inserted into the machine.

Once the polls close on election night, the team at the central absentee precinct prints out about four copies of election results tape from the absentee ballot machine, the in-person voting machine and the provisional ballot machine. Then the team breaks into two groups to prepare statements of results. If observers are present, they are allowed to view both the the machine's public counter and the election tape results.

After all of that, the team is able to empty and secure the ballots from the respective machines and close and secure the machines.

"If Petersburg shines at Election time, Gwen had a hand in deciphering all those numbers and bringing it to fruition," Wilmoth said.

The work requires precision and transparency, and Terreforte said she feels honored to be able to maintain a key mechanism of democracy.

“I started as a green-eared poll worker eager to learn and to see what it was all about,” she said. “It’s just so rewarding in so many ways to me.”

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: 2023 Newsmaker Gwendolyn Terreforte: She makes sure absentee votes are counted