View From a Height

Well, of course, you can always go read what the campaign has to say.

By now you know that the result was 71% - 29% in our favor. You also know that Lois Court won over on the Dem side against Liz Adams and Josh Hanfling, 44-38-18, respectively. What was interesting was that the preponderance of the vote was early (in our case, about 1800 of 2500 total votes were cast early). We won 75% (yes 75%) of game-day voters, but it barely nudged the overall percentage.

The early mail-in results were reported as 70% of precincts reporting, which meant, in this case, 70% of the vote. (The precincts apparently called in the number of votes cast, but Election Division had to count the paper ballots back at HQ.) So we had mathematically clinched by the time the first couple of precincts came in. And yet, the habit of watching the percentages, and watching them move, is so ingrained that it overrode the hard numbers.

A side note about the East Side Kosher Deli, which did a terrific job catering the event, with veggies, a chicken-finger variety pack, all sorts of beverages, and delightful crescent rolls.

Afterwards, Mark, his kids, and I went down to the Election Division to watch the process and the count. It was painfully slow. The central counting of paper ballots has some virtues - accuracy and a permanent records, mostly - but speed isn't one of them. The boxes have to come in, be correlated with the precinct, leftover ballots accounted for, etc. Then they're entered into the system, and finally counted. There's a whole conflict-resolution-escalation process in the event that the hyper-sensitive scanner spits them out.

The whole experience was a bit like going on a factory tour for Tillamook cheese. Yes, you get to watch it from a safe distance, and it all looks good. But if someone's systematically poisoning the product, you'd have no way of spotting it. I don't think anyone's doing that, but it just means that the only way to make the process truly transparent is to also make it truly invasive.

To their credit, at 11:00 at night, Alton Dillard, Stephanie O'Malley, Michael Scarpello, and Tom Mann were alert, friendly, and informative. I had probably been up longer than they, but still, to be that chipper that late just isn't natural. A particular thanks to Alton, who was ultra-responsive to requests for data over the course of the primary. I know, he was only doing his job. But there's doing your job, and then there's Doing Your Job.

Now, we have to start studying the numbers for the general. This is gonna be fun.