Wednesday, November 7, 2018

The Fun Never Ends

It seems that the election process in my county is not even close to over. As a background note, several of the county officers including the Sheriff and county clerk are Republicans whom everyone likes and were not considered in any danger of losing their jobs. The Dems had put in opposition candidates simply to avoid letting the officers go unopposed. Actual qualification for the job was considered less important than getting the box filled on the ballot.

During the counting process, a hose broke on the counting machine. Presumably an air hose, but this brought the process to a halt with some 40,000 ballots yet to be counted. As of right now, the placeholder candidates are in a tight race with the incumbent regulars with the Sheriff challenger actually leading by a very small amount. The first clue was probably an announcement from the Clerk that some 1500 unsigned ballots might well swing the election one way or the other.

These jobs, in this county, are not normally considered seriously at risk.

I just have visions of our clerk and recorder, down at the counting warehouse, frantically stroking a bicycle pump in an effort to get the counting machine back on line.

2 comments:

Merle said...

Makes me wonder just how this machine works, using air power....
I wonder if that is more tamper proof that the purely electronic machines...

Billll said...

The air power bit is probably in a vacuum generator that picks up the next ballot and drops it where the rollers can feed it into the machine. I hear they got it fixed fairly quickly. Still awaiting the final counts.