Recount Mania

On Primary and General Election days I volunteer my time to be an election judge. I don't know why I started doing this last year, but I enjoy being part of the process I guess.

On November 4, the U.S. Senate Race between Al Franken (yes, the former Saturday Night Live guy) and Norm Coleman (the incumbent) was too close to call. An automatic recount is called when the total votes are less than .5% apart, which is what happened in this case.

As more details about how the the recount would work became clear, and Minnetonka, where I work, was named as a site to recount 46,000 ballots, the city cleark came to me asking to help. My answer to him was why not, and now I am helping with a historic recount. On Friday and Saturday I spent part of each day, counting and sorting ballots. At each table are three "employees of the city". One of these is responsible for sorting the ballots into piles--one for Franken, one for Coleman, and one for other. The other two city employees are responsible for counting the piles into 25. The Franken team and the Coleman team are each allowed to have two people at the table. These people are allowed to "challenge" what piles the ballots are placed in. When all of the counting is done we compare our hand counted numbers to the numbers on the electronic tabulator from the end of the night on November 4.

Things I've learned from being a part of this process:

1. Every vote counts! Out of nearly 3 million ballots cast in this U.S. Senate Race, it could come down to just 100 votes between the two candidates. More reason to get out and vote. Late on Friday, a gentleman who had been a challenger for one of the parties earlier in the day brought his kids in to see what was going on. Here they were learning why it's important to vote.

2. The electronic tabulators are accurate. There's always been a myth that perhaps the electronic tabulators are accurate, but we are finding that they are dead on. It's the humans that aren't necessarily accurate.

3. When watching who the challengers are for each party you cannot see a pattern. I thought that perhaps I would be able to pick out the Coleman supportors from the Franken supportors, but I cannot.

It's been an interesting ride and more ballots to count on Monday!