Board of incompetence

With primary elections for mayor and other offices less than a month away, the Board of Elections has been training 30,000 poll workers , a mission complicated by the return of the old lever voting machines. Uh, oh.

Herewith are two reports from the field, submitted by people who underwent poll-worker training last week in Brooklyn.

Allan Feinblum, 73, is retired from Merrill Lynch and last served as a poll worker in 2009. He joined a roomful of potential poll workers who gathered at Public School 99 for lessons in how to do their jobs, for which they will be paid $200 for primary day service plus $100 for training if they show up on primary day.

The instructor devoted the first part of the six-hour class to the old lever voting machines, which are coming back into use because the board’s electronic vote scanners cannot produce a ballot count fast enough to have both a primary and a possible runoff. She said the machines “break down 30% of the time, but in her experience it may be a higher rate of breakdown.”

Double uh, oh.

Although the board estimates the failure rate at 4%, the class then spent time on how to use “emergency paper ballots, since they would be an alternative to using the lever machines.” Feinblum said.

Since the class would be tested on this mass of material, the instructor gave students four booklets: a 103-page manual for the lever machines; a 189-page manual for the scanners; a 83-page guide explaining the duties of poll workers, and a 23-page packet of forms. For a total of 398 pages, which were available for use in taking a 25-question test right then and there.

Feinblum failed to hit the pass mark of 20 correct answers. He will try again.

Meanwhile, our correspondent from a training session for poll site coordinators, who are in charge at each voting location, described the instruction imparted by trainer Henry Lallave, a Brooklyn Republican state committeeman.

The class was due to start at 9:00 a.m. It began at 9:25 a.m., at which point Lallave opened with a long introduction on how easy the class would be. He advised the 16 trainees they “didn’t have to turn off their phones.” By then it was 10:00 a.m.

Then he got to the important stuff: apparel, warning men not to wear muscle shirts and women not to wear midriff-revealing garments as it could “distract men, who might walk into walls.”

No shorts should be worn, which led to a discussion about blue jeans, which are okay if “clean and pressed.” No hats are allowed, except for religious reasons .

According to our correspondent, Lallave offered not a word about managing poll workers. To prep for the test, Lallave went over some of the test questions and answers, leading one of trainees to complain that he was wasn’t going in order.

Then it was test time, with one coordinator cribbing answers from another. And those are the people who plan to be charge.

“This election will be a disaster like Nov. 2012, only worse,” Feinblum said.

What’s your bet?