Recount, day 2

The day dawned early, at 8:30AM in the Winnebago County Courthouse. My feet are feeling the strain-they are most definately not "gelling" as in the commercial for the gel shoe inserts. I am still not bored. Today was interesting. We from both sides of the campaign and the lawyers from both sides today went back and forth (for over 2 hours) over an absentee ballot that was not opened. A mistake was made at the polling place. The county clerk made a phone call to the almost disenfranchised voter. At this point, no one had any clue as to how this person had voted. The tension mounted. When the ballot was finally opened, the voter had written in the libertarian candidate for the 18th Senate District, which got a really good laugh from everyone. Hey, every vote counts. Just apparently not for us in this instance.

So far today (well, I left at 5:45 PM and there were still two wards that needed to be run through the machine), Jess was up 8 votes and Randy was only up by I think 4. At least we're not losing votes. It's concerning to me that there was also a person who managed to get a ballot to vote early at city hall who was not registered to vote. How did that happen? The unopened envelope was discovered by one of the poll workers who was going through the absentee envelopes which have to be matched to ballots. The unregistered ballot was not opened or counted.

At one point Paulette looked towards the back of the room and saw one of the evil Fitzgerald brothers:

The canvassers are also having real fun untangling and counting the tapes from the electronic voting machines. This was the scene at one point today:

The caption on this picture should be, "Are we having fun yet?"

We will have managed to get through 6 wards today, ending with ward 10. Tomorrow we start the University wards, which should be really interesting. I feel a long day with a lot of ballot challenges ahead. I so need to be gelling it's not funny. I don't think that even big fat pillows tied to my feet would help. This is a real foot killer. At least the room today wasn't hot--in fact, it was pretty cold in there. Some people were wearing gloves and coats. Tomorrow we are in the Orrin King administration building. Friday and Saturday we are back in the courthouse.

I am also not looking forward to the town of Algoma votes. Ugh. With their polling place problems last presidential election, it could be real fun (not).

On the knitting front, I got the back of my sweater done today and started the left front. Paulette and I invited the city clerk to knit with us on Wednesday nights at Starbucks, which she is considering. If this keeps up we'll have all the public employees in the county knitting there.

It's getting to bedtime now.....my fluffy featherbed is calling me.