Nov 2 election

I served as a chief election judge again this year.  I have five election judges on my team, and due to an out of state commitment by a husband and wife on election day, I had gotten two new people on my election team to replace them.  One older lady had worked as an election judge some years ago in Cutbank, Montana, but had no recent training, and this was the first election experience for the guy.  But he was very enthusiastic and happy to be an election judge.  Both people did well.

I picked up the ballots and supplies Monday night and headed out to the precinct to do some preliminary setup of the polling place.  I had been working on my corral rebuild and lost track of the time so I ended up running an hour late. Ted, one of my election judges, had said he would help me as Tammy - back in Minnesota - wasn't available to help me this time to set up the polling place at the church.  However when I called Ted on Monday he said he was hours out of town as the truck he was driving had just spent many hours in a repair shop.  I ended up setting up the voting booths and hanging the signs myself.  Then I rushed home to watch "Dancing with the Stars" only to find the TV station off the air for the night.

Election day started early as I had to be at the precinct (way out of town) by 6 am as the election started at 7 am.  On the way I picked up Donna Jo, one of my election judges.   She is 78 years old (but doesn't look or act it) and she doesn't like to drive out of town after dark.

We finished setting up the polling place and were ready for the election to start with five to ten minutes to spare.

As this was an off year election I expected a lower turnout. Montana has liberal absentee ballot requirements and I expected that would also keep down the number of voters at the polls.  They said today that 47% of the voters used absentee ballots.  I was surprised that we had a steady stream of voters.  We had ten voting booths and the automark machine.  During the after-work rush we has a short line of people waiting to vote and I gave a few of them the option to use an extra table to mark their ballots and three of them took that option.

We had so many voters that we "ran" out of ballots.  Our precinct is split in two as our geographic area is so large and has some mountains dividing parts of it.  In the past, for our section we always had more than enough ballots, but this year we had 495 voters and needed 501 ballots as six electors had spoiled their ballots by over-marking their choices.

We had 500 ballots.

When we had 110 ballots left and hours to go, I had asked for more ballots but later the poll runner got confused and delivered extra registration cards.  Another precinct had requested the cards.  Another election official had to bring extra ballots and she arrived when we only had 2 ballots left.

*whew*  That was close!

So we had more voters than in 2008 during the presidential election.  For that election I believe we had 350 or so voters.

I don't know why the strong interest in this election.  There were hardly any statewide elections, and the few statewide elections weren't ever close and had no excitement.  The ballot initiatives were interesting, but nothing that would drive people to the polls.  A few country races were contested so that must have been the reason.  The lone incumbent Democratic County  commissioner was easily defeated.  In fact, I don't think a single Democrat won in the entire county.

The polls closed at 8 pm.  We were packed up around 9 pm, Donna Jo and I dropped off the results at the election headquarters by 9:30 pm, and I was home in time for the 10 pm news and the start of the election results.  I didn't last long before I fell asleep.

Another election.  Another success.