I figured tonight would be the night. The final ballots would be counted and this election would finally be over. I figured wrong.
Earlier in the day I had been asked by two different people if I could give a couple of hours at the warehouse to help observe as the final ballots were counted. Now, I had already gone on election night, and I was taping The Line in the afternoon (don’t forget to watch Friday night at 7:00 p.m. on KNME, or Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m.) But I thought, “Why not go in the evening? It’ll be fun to be there when the final ballot is counted.”
Unfortunately, tonight was not the night.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why not. The room was packed with people. I was told there were thirty tables, and each table had four people sitting at it. So, you’d think we could run through the remaining ballots pretty quickly. And my guess is that if they would have handed out the ballots, we could have. But they didn’t, so we didn’t.
Go ahead, guess how many ballots my table of four counted in four hours time? Seriously, take your best guess. In all fairness, keep in mind that only two people were counting. The other two were observers. How many ballots do you think two people could tally in four hours?
The answer… ONE! I kid you not. ONE BALLOT IN FOUR HOURS! There were at least sixty people in the room who were getting paid (the rest of us were volunteers) to do nothing but sit… then take a break… then sit… then get something to eat… then sit… then count one ballot (maybe three) then start the whole sitting process again.
There is something very, very wrong with this process. The worst part is I was told by someone at my table that yesterday they went EIGHT HOURS without counting a single ballot.