At Large in Ballard by Peggy Sturdivant

"Is this really the last time?"

That was the primary question the voters asked as we issued ballots in the Ballard church gymnasium, and I'm sure it was the same question over and over in polling stations all over King County.

Last week's election day had the turnout and spirit of an estate sale - the most pressing issue on the citizens' minds was the publicized demise of the neighborhood polling place. Perhaps the strong turnout for the 10 precincts in the gym was for the same reason I'd volunteer to work as a Poll Book Judge, would it really be the last time?

From 7 a.m. to the poll closure at 8 p.m., hundreds of registered voters sat down at our tables to share their voting stories while shuffling through wallets and purses looking for their ID, each lamenting the passing of a tradition. They swapped stories of pulling the lever and poll booths with curtains, seeing certain neighbors only at the polls, the first time that they ever voted. A man who'd been voting in the same gym for 27 years was reluctant to leave us for the relative privacy of the 13 booths that lined the back wall. Even the voters who hand-delivered their absentee ballots seemed to be paying their last respects.

I passed my own polling place at the end of my street when I drove through the fog just before 6 a.m. on election day, the only other people I saw. By 6 a.m. my friend Ellen and I had met the other workers who would be our companions for the next 16 hours. Grandmothers, mothers, one King County elections person, a new attorney, a college student - on this day they were precinct judge, provisional judge, inspector - all of us together until every last scrap of paper had been accounted for, no one person allowed to leave before another.

I can't speak for other polling places but the one where I spent the day made me especially proud of people exercising the right to vote. Almost everyone would enter the inner doors and then stand in a certain spot, as though it was marked on a stage, to search for their voter registration card, usually insisting on unfurling their lives even when we offered to help find their precinct on the master list. There was a moment when it was perfectly quiet with no one needing a ballot, but all 13 privacy booths filled with people at work with pen and paper, a voter to their left, a voter to their right.

Some voters valued speed, especially those who voted on their way to work but there was also the man in my precinct who stood at work on his ballot for an hour. He must have read every word of the Voter's Guide, every word of the ballot. Who does that? A woman asked if she and her partner could work on their ballots together, "It's a family affair," she said. He looked damaged by life - she was vivaciousness itself. They sat side by side at a table working on their ballot for so long that I nearly forgot them. Then the machine rejected her ballot because of an error. She insisted on completing an entirely new ballot not wanting to jeopardize her vote, even as her partner pulled a pen knife and insisted he could fix the first ballot.

With Ellen at my side for 13 hours we watched the approach of bicyclists in their helmets, women with newborns or sleeping puppies, parents with first-time voters in tow, couples who took turns chasing the toddler while the other voted. We watched a tiny woman with a cane make her way to us slowly and in obvious pain. She was just recovering from breaking a second hip; perfectly matched parentheses her doctor had told her.

Starting at 4 p.m. the daylong dribbles became waves of people voting after their work day, and the atmosphere became almost party-like, a happy reunion. "I'll miss this," neighbor after neighbor told me. "I'll miss voting in person. Is this really the last time?" Asking a question we couldn't answer with certainty.

Cut off from television, radio, cell phones and computers we poll workers talked to another and voters all day long. It reminded me of working craft shows and my years in customer service. It was an old-fashioned day of interacting with people.

There were three still completing their ballots when the polls officially closed. They could take as long as they needed. We accounted for ballots and completed our reports. We washed our dishes in the church kitchen, collapsed the tables and dragged them to a closet. We folded and stacked the chairs while the inspectors secured every ballot. The youngest poll worker found a basketball and began shooting, the man quitting smoking from my left started playing as well. No one leaves until the secured ballots are in the precinct judge's car along with a witness.

"See you in February," some said but there was a question mark at the end.

After 16 hours in the company of 10 precincts I drove home again in the dark. At the end of my block those other poll workers were parting ways. I wanted to remark on this to Ellen, but she was no longer at my right and for the first time in ages I felt downright lonely, as though it was really goodbye.

Peggy's e-mail is atlargeinballard@yahoo.com. She writes additional pieces for the Seattle P.I.'s Ballard webtown at http://blog.seattlepi.