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Dec. 8th, 2016 08:40 amThe courts have now said that the state can stop the recount, so the process is unlikely to be finished. It simplifies things for me which is good because Cordelia is so stressed out that she’s actually sick. This means we can both stay home.
From what I gather, the recount got through half of the process. I’m not sure if that’s half of all ballots cast or half of all precincts. Nothing turned up to show any inaccuracies, errors, or fraud. Based on what I saw yesterday, recounting was generally resulting in one or two votes being counted that hadn’t been before because of the limitations of scantron technology (though I’m kind of boggled that someone of voting age doesn’t realize that putting an x or a check mark in the bubble won’t work. The instructions are written clearly on the ballot).
I’m not pleased with the court decision because the bits I’ve seen quoted pretty much seem to say that a recount should only happen if there’s already evidence of fraud or other problems. I view that as rather like saying, "Well, that bridge hasn’t actually collapsed, and we don’t need to inspect it until it does." That is, I don’t think that this recount was necessary because I was sure there was something wrong. I just think that it’s a good idea to check things over from time to time to make sure that all the parts are working. I also think that it would be a good thing if our state had laws mandating recounts when the margin in an election is under a certain threshold and requiring some sort of random auditing of the process by picking, say, a dozen precincts, different ones each time, throughout the state to recount every election.
I got cranky with the Republican observer who was at my table most of the time yesterday. He was firmly of the opinion that even something as basic as making sure that all kids have food is bad because it creates a culture of dependency by making those kids think that the world will take care of them. That was so very, very alien to me, and he wouldn’t budge on it or shut up about it. I finally told him that I consider it our Christian duty to make sure that everyone’s fed, and he had nothing more to say. (Scott thinks that saying that hit the guy where he lives. I think that may be making an assumption about the guy’s religion, but he was a 70 something white guy with a very Anglo name.)
He was polite and friendly to everyone, but I found myself wondering how he’d have interacted with any of us if we were not white and not obviously middle class or if we had signs of not being straight, cis, Christian, etc. The only person at the table who wasn’t white was there for about an hour and a half and was a twenty something Asian American woman acting as a Republican observer. He was very nice to her, but I wonder how much of that was his assumption that she agreed with him.
The volunteer who was organizing the Democratic observers was very conscientious about checking in and following up, but goodness, he looked young. If he was twenty five, I’d be astonished.
Each political party had a different form for their people to use to track information. The ones I had from the Democrats were longer than the forms the Greens and the Republicans had, but a largish chunk of that was information about what the recount ought to look like, procedurally, which was something I really only needed once. Mainly what we needed to record was the precinct and our names and contact information and the finally vote tallies. My sheet had a big section where I could note any information I considered important. The Greens and the Republicans were very concerned with recording seal numbers. I considered it enough to record whether or not the initial seals were intact and matched the paper records.
There were six candidates officially on the ballot for President, and we saw votes for all of them. We laughed about the one precinct that had at least one vote for all of them having given us a bingo. We didn’t see any valid write ins, and over the course of the day, we saw about twenty ballots where people hadn’t voted for President at all (that doesn’t count the 'anybody else, please' write in sort of thing).
I’m low on sleep because I got the hiccups about half an hour after Scott got up. They lasted over an hour which meant I still had them when Cordelia got up. At least I no longer have the stress migraine. I count that as a win. I’m still going to go back to bed in a little bit; I’m just not in migraine pain. Given that, I’m going to stay up long enough to do a few things that I normally get done early in the morning or that I would normally have done yesterday and didn’t get to.
From what I gather, the recount got through half of the process. I’m not sure if that’s half of all ballots cast or half of all precincts. Nothing turned up to show any inaccuracies, errors, or fraud. Based on what I saw yesterday, recounting was generally resulting in one or two votes being counted that hadn’t been before because of the limitations of scantron technology (though I’m kind of boggled that someone of voting age doesn’t realize that putting an x or a check mark in the bubble won’t work. The instructions are written clearly on the ballot).
I’m not pleased with the court decision because the bits I’ve seen quoted pretty much seem to say that a recount should only happen if there’s already evidence of fraud or other problems. I view that as rather like saying, "Well, that bridge hasn’t actually collapsed, and we don’t need to inspect it until it does." That is, I don’t think that this recount was necessary because I was sure there was something wrong. I just think that it’s a good idea to check things over from time to time to make sure that all the parts are working. I also think that it would be a good thing if our state had laws mandating recounts when the margin in an election is under a certain threshold and requiring some sort of random auditing of the process by picking, say, a dozen precincts, different ones each time, throughout the state to recount every election.
I got cranky with the Republican observer who was at my table most of the time yesterday. He was firmly of the opinion that even something as basic as making sure that all kids have food is bad because it creates a culture of dependency by making those kids think that the world will take care of them. That was so very, very alien to me, and he wouldn’t budge on it or shut up about it. I finally told him that I consider it our Christian duty to make sure that everyone’s fed, and he had nothing more to say. (Scott thinks that saying that hit the guy where he lives. I think that may be making an assumption about the guy’s religion, but he was a 70 something white guy with a very Anglo name.)
He was polite and friendly to everyone, but I found myself wondering how he’d have interacted with any of us if we were not white and not obviously middle class or if we had signs of not being straight, cis, Christian, etc. The only person at the table who wasn’t white was there for about an hour and a half and was a twenty something Asian American woman acting as a Republican observer. He was very nice to her, but I wonder how much of that was his assumption that she agreed with him.
The volunteer who was organizing the Democratic observers was very conscientious about checking in and following up, but goodness, he looked young. If he was twenty five, I’d be astonished.
Each political party had a different form for their people to use to track information. The ones I had from the Democrats were longer than the forms the Greens and the Republicans had, but a largish chunk of that was information about what the recount ought to look like, procedurally, which was something I really only needed once. Mainly what we needed to record was the precinct and our names and contact information and the finally vote tallies. My sheet had a big section where I could note any information I considered important. The Greens and the Republicans were very concerned with recording seal numbers. I considered it enough to record whether or not the initial seals were intact and matched the paper records.
There were six candidates officially on the ballot for President, and we saw votes for all of them. We laughed about the one precinct that had at least one vote for all of them having given us a bingo. We didn’t see any valid write ins, and over the course of the day, we saw about twenty ballots where people hadn’t voted for President at all (that doesn’t count the 'anybody else, please' write in sort of thing).
I’m low on sleep because I got the hiccups about half an hour after Scott got up. They lasted over an hour which meant I still had them when Cordelia got up. At least I no longer have the stress migraine. I count that as a win. I’m still going to go back to bed in a little bit; I’m just not in migraine pain. Given that, I’m going to stay up long enough to do a few things that I normally get done early in the morning or that I would normally have done yesterday and didn’t get to.
