primary election
we had a primary on may 9. after the ballots come in from the precincts, we run them through a scanner which tabulates the different races. we save everything to a zip disk to upload the data to my office pc where i print out reports for the Election Commissioner and to put on the County's website.
elections are a fun time with a few moments of high-stress scattered throughout the night. the ladies that work in the election office bring plenty of food for everyone and the workers bring plenty of energy and laughter.
because of the governor race (the incumbant Dave Heineman vs the legendary husker football coach Tom Osborne), many people switched parties to have a say in this important race (we don't have enough democrats in this area to make a significant difference). enough of them waited to switch until after the ballots were purchased that we ran out of republican ones in many precincts. these precincts were sent ballots made on a copy machine, so the ballot scanner couldn't be used to count them. many also decided to vote non-partisan and those too had to be hand-counted.
many races were decided on election night, but a few were close enough that the hand-counted ballots determined the final results. we scanned almost 10,000 ballots in 2.5 hours on election night, but it took 3 long days to process the ones that needed to be hand-counted.
by law, both a republican and a democratic representative must do the hand-counting and must witness the reporting of that data. so the 3 of us spent all of friday manually entering data for less than 200 ballots. one of the rep's read to me the totals to be added for a particular race for each precinct, i typed it in, and the other one made sure i didn't mistype. there were enough close races that a mistake from me might make a huge difference and we were all zoned after a few hours, so there was plenty of stress involved in that process.
on election night, the race for the County Board seat in my district was within 8 votes, but after all of the hand-counting it was down to within 6 (another confirmation that every vote counts!). by law, the election office is required to do a recount if a race is within 1% of the winners votes, but a canditate can request a recount as his cost if he wishes. this race was decided by 1.7%, but we didn't know for a few days if the loser would want a recount.
i don't think the election is legally completed yet, but i'm fairly certain my work has been completed. i am so thankful for this! i worked 54 hours in 5 days last week and dealt with the election for all but a few hours of that. i wasn't prepared for the election taking that much of my time. the only other election i've been involved with was a city election with only a yes/no vote. for some reason, i expected the processing of the primary election to be comparable with that one.
we had a primary on may 9. after the ballots come in from the precincts, we run them through a scanner which tabulates the different races. we save everything to a zip disk to upload the data to my office pc where i print out reports for the Election Commissioner and to put on the County's website.
elections are a fun time with a few moments of high-stress scattered throughout the night. the ladies that work in the election office bring plenty of food for everyone and the workers bring plenty of energy and laughter.
because of the governor race (the incumbant Dave Heineman vs the legendary husker football coach Tom Osborne), many people switched parties to have a say in this important race (we don't have enough democrats in this area to make a significant difference). enough of them waited to switch until after the ballots were purchased that we ran out of republican ones in many precincts. these precincts were sent ballots made on a copy machine, so the ballot scanner couldn't be used to count them. many also decided to vote non-partisan and those too had to be hand-counted.
many races were decided on election night, but a few were close enough that the hand-counted ballots determined the final results. we scanned almost 10,000 ballots in 2.5 hours on election night, but it took 3 long days to process the ones that needed to be hand-counted.
by law, both a republican and a democratic representative must do the hand-counting and must witness the reporting of that data. so the 3 of us spent all of friday manually entering data for less than 200 ballots. one of the rep's read to me the totals to be added for a particular race for each precinct, i typed it in, and the other one made sure i didn't mistype. there were enough close races that a mistake from me might make a huge difference and we were all zoned after a few hours, so there was plenty of stress involved in that process.
on election night, the race for the County Board seat in my district was within 8 votes, but after all of the hand-counting it was down to within 6 (another confirmation that every vote counts!). by law, the election office is required to do a recount if a race is within 1% of the winners votes, but a canditate can request a recount as his cost if he wishes. this race was decided by 1.7%, but we didn't know for a few days if the loser would want a recount.
i don't think the election is legally completed yet, but i'm fairly certain my work has been completed. i am so thankful for this! i worked 54 hours in 5 days last week and dealt with the election for all but a few hours of that. i wasn't prepared for the election taking that much of my time. the only other election i've been involved with was a city election with only a yes/no vote. for some reason, i expected the processing of the primary election to be comparable with that one.
posted by zippy @ 9:45 PM
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