Counting and Counting and Counting

So today I woke up at 8:04. Despite the fact that I'd set two alarms on my cell phone because I was supposed to be at the courthouse at 8:00am to help prepare for processing the absentee/early voter ballots. Or so I thought. Mid-swearing, I threw on some clothes, brushed my teeth and hair, chugged some Emergen-C and grabbed a bagel, managing to get to the courthouse by about 8:15 only to sit and wait for the poor, harried people in the auditor's office to get a spare moment to show us what to do. Which means we got actually started processing ballots at about 10am.

And by processing ballots I mean counting stacks of ballots in their envelopes, taking the ballots, still in their secrecy sleeves, out of the outer envelope and bundling them in stacks of 25. (I was a SPEED DEMON with the letter opener!!) And then, after we'd done that with a batch of around 600, we had to count up all the envelopes and all the ballots and make sure that we had a ballot for every envelope. Which meant counting all 600 or 700 things 3 or 4 times. But we always ended up with every thing matching up by the end of it. And then start on another batch of 600 or 700, till we were done. And then we locked up all the ballots in big metal boxes with numbered seals and wrote everything down and locked the boxes in another room in the courthouse. I left the courthouse around 8:45pm.

There were somewhere around 4,000 absentee/early ballots issued, so we're still gonna have a bunch to do tomorrow.

And then we're going to actually have to take the ballots out of the secrecy sleeves and run them through the machine that counts the votes! And then hand count any write-in votes. And put all the affidavit envelopes in numerical order so we can account for any of those 4,000 that didn't get returned to us.

And the chairs were hard wooden ones, and I had 1/2 an hour for lunch and another 10 minute break around 4:30 where I dashed to Rev's and got a Mocha Java shake and a scone. Didn't have dinner till afterwards, went to Subway.

But.

It was really amazing. It felt good. Taking the oath to do everything right and and in our power to ensure everything goes right. Counting every ballot and envelope, over and over if we had to, making sure none were stuck together, that everything was accounted for. Seeing all the names on the outside envelopes, friends who are away at school but still sent in their votes, all the people who voted early, all the people who CARE about their country. All the little rules in place to make sure everything is fair - there has to be at least one Republican and one Democrat in the room at all times, and one of each party to transport the ballots from room to room. Outside observers can come watch us work. (I'm not sure what their credentials have to be, I don't think just anyone can wander in, but there can definitely be people watching us work, and there were several today.)

I felt like "Here are good people, doing a good job, looking out for everyone and making sure everything is fair." It was damn inspiring. And thank goodness, because tomorrow is going to be an even longer day.