Much Ado About Nothing

Because I am supposedly "good with computers", I got drafted into this part time job setting up and testing voting machines. On Super Tuesday when the rest of the country was selecting nominees for president, our county had a vote on a 1 ¢ sales tax.

This one cent tax is to be split up among the towns according to their size. A big hunk of it is to go to the county itself. There were 2 ballots at each poll -- one ballot for people living inside an incorporated area and one ballot for all of us unincorporated, disenfranchised people. Each poll had its own set of specially printed ballots.

I was asked to go to the poll and sit for the last three hours of voting. I don't know why. My job was to remove the computer card from the machine and take it to the courthouse as soon as the polls closed at eight. One of the ladies in charge of the poll was suppose to take all the materials and the paper trail back to the courthouse when they were done. I thought this was stupid and told them as long as I was risking my life on snowy roads for a computer card, I might as well take the rest of the junk, too.

The three polling ladies were there for the duration -- one hour set up and 8 hours of the polls being open. In the three hours I was there, three people came in to vote.

The ladies played a dice game and I did Sudokus. Around 7 p.m. the auditor called my cell and told me to wait until the roads cleared in the morning to haul everything in. I was relieved that I did not have to drive through blowing snow in the dark.

We closed up shop at 8 and I phoned the courthouse with the results. It was very important to let the courthouse know immediately what had happened so they could post it on the website. The ladies signed their names in 20 different places and everything was locked securely and loaded into the trunk of my car.

This morning I checked the website and no results had been posted. It made me so happy to know I had stood outside in a snow storm trying to get a decent signal on my phone last night. I drove to the courthouse and at 8 a.m. hauled a tote box, a big portfolio and 2 bags of ballots up the stairs to the auditor's office.

And the auditor's office wasn't open.

CLOSED.

Yes, that is my thumb in the picture. I can barely use my cell phone as it is. I thought I was doing good to get the picture on my computer since I don't have a plan that pays for picture phones.

I wandered into the recorder's office and found out that the auditor doesn't open until 8:30. So I drug the stuff in there, went to the coffee shop across the street and filled my mug and came back to wait. And take more pictures.

Inside the courthouse.

The auditor came at 8:25 and I handed over all the stuff and signed some more papers and verified that yes, indeed, out of the 185 ballots that had been printed for our precinct, nineteen had been used by voters.