The first time Lawrence resident Virginia Romero, 88, worked the polls during an election was when Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president. Romero is pictured with her daughter Judy Romero, of Lawrence, who will work her first election this year.

Ask Virginia Romero what she remembers about the time Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president, and she’ll tell you marks. Lots of marks.

One mark, two mark, three mark, four mark, cross. One mark, two mark, three mark . . . . That was the high-tech, Douglas County ballot-counting system in place when Eisenhower was elected president. Mark after mark, and indeed they added up.

“We counted votes until 9 a.m. the next morning,” Virginia says.

Virginia was a poll worker back in 1952, and in those days votes were counted at each polling station. So Virginia and a crew spent their evening, and part of their Wednesday morning, inside the gymnasium at New York Elementary School, the polling station she staffed.

Evidently she had a good pencil sharpener. She signed up for the same duty the next election, and she has been a Douglas County poll worker every election since.

“I like being around people,” says Virginia. “I used to see a lot of people I didn’t see any other day of the year. But most of the people I knew are gone now. I’m 88. You know, that happens.”

It does happen, just like elections. Every year — whether it be of a local, state or national variety — an election happens in Douglas County. Let’s face it, many of us do our best to block out the campaigns and all that come with it. (As I tell the pollster who calls me each evening, between Greg Orman, Pat Roberts and the roast beef that is getting cold on my dinner plate, I plan to vote for the roast beef.) But that attitude may cause us to forget that there are still plenty of people involved in the process that we easily can feel good about.

During Tuesday’s election there will be about 400 poll workers in Douglas County, each earning the whopping sum of $110 to $125 for what will be at least a 14-hour day.

“They’re our neighbors,” says Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew, who is responsible for conducting elections.

Many of them have been our neighbors for a long time. Shew said at one point he did a survey and found the average age of a Douglas County poll worker was 72. The majority of the workers are retirees because it’s difficult for other people to take off a day of work to work at the polls, although some certainly do.

“It is funny,” Shew says. “I always seem to run into our poll workers volunteering somewhere else in the community. They’re the ushers at the Lied Center or they are working at a United Way event or helping some other nonprofit. They really seem to be the foundation of volunteerism in the community.”

That’s not all they are the foundation of. Shew said it is tough to overstate the roll that poll workers play in the process. As much as technology has changed our world — we no longer count ballots by pencil mark — our most basic of American freedoms is still highly dependent on people.

“I can’t run a polling station without them,” Shew said. “You can’t have a system where you just check yourself in at a kiosk, and you vote your own ballot. It can’t be like self-check out at the grocery store. That will never work.”

Yes, no self-check out, Virginia says.

“You have to watch those ballots real close,” she says.

The team of three to four people is responsible for ensuring that a voter’s name is on the voter registration rolls, that they are given the proper ballot, and that the ballot is properly returned to a secure ballot box. These days they also check IDs, and they hand out provisional ballots, which are ballots given to people when some question of their eligibility is raised.

The team of poll workers don’t count the votes anymore, but they are responsible for reconciling that they have the same number of ballots that they started with, meaning they count every ballot that was voted, and every ballot that wasn’t voted. Then two people — never just one — drive the ballots to the Douglas County courthouse to deliver them to Shew and his crew, where the votes are tabulated.

While technology has changed how some of the tasks of a poll worker are done, much of what they actually do is unchanged from more than a century ago. One detail of the job has remained unchanged: Each team of three workers must include a Republican and a Democrat.

Think about that for a second: Republicans and Democrats sit side by side for 14 hours or more. Hell does not freeze over. Rush Limbaugh’s head does not explode. What’s left of Bill Maher’s hair does not catch on fire. Shew tells his poll workers that for at least a day “you don’t have an opinion and you aren’t involved in politics.”

Virginia says that is easier to do than you may think. Just talk about things that are really important.

“We talk about what is going on at home and with the kids,” Virginia says. “We always get along real well.”

This year, the catching up may be easier than ever. For the first time, Virginia’s daughter Judy Romero will be working at a polling station. She’ll be assigned to the same East Lawrence polling place as her mother.

“Mom always has been a very conscientious person about making sure we vote,” Judy says. “I guess it just seemed like the next step was to work at the polling place.”

Shew says it’s not uncommon to see sons or daughters of poll workers sign up for the job. He thinks they must see how important it is to their parents.

“They take a ton of pride in this job,” Shew says. “I always remember the election we had in the blizzard a few years ago. We called poll workers the night before to talk about whether they were going to be able to get to the polls. We had so many of them say they live just a few blocks away, and they would walk if they have to. They just kept telling me the polls would be open by 7 a.m.”

Virginia says it is an easy job to take pride in.

“It makes you feel good,” Virginia says. “It makes you feel like you have done something for your country.”

In other words, it is a good way to leave a mark.