In the middle of my busy and eventful “vacation”, I disappeared for a day of election judging… which was even more exhausting than the hauling and lifting of butchering.
I may (or may not) give a full report on that later. Mostly it was the pure hell of good natured gossip (I don’t gossip and don’t care to hear it) and endless talk. I was working with nice, kind, sweet, generous, well meaning people but they just talked so much. Some folks start the day with their mouth running and keep it up until they go to bed. I’m used to long periods of silence. I just don’t have that much shit to say. I found it difficult to think.
BTW: the voters were near universally awesome. With very few exception, everyone who found time to go to a place to vote in person were just plain old normal people and not the flaky lunatics that one tends to notice when you’re out and about… we may see human train wrecks everywhere but there’s still a large group of sane citizens out there. Many people arrived, voted, and left having said less than a dozen words. I wished I could have gone with them. But I cooled my jets in a cheap plastic seat for 15 very tiringly verbal hours.
During a few brief moments in the afternoon I got to look at internet memes gloating about the red wave. That was fun. Later I heard third hand that the election (which I’d hoped would be fairly straightforward) was already going full retard. Ironically, I was too busy managing and counting ballots to bitch about the results. I was literally 100% focused on getting them to the people who needed them and had no time to get all judgy about their votes.
I also made a few quick checks on my blog to approve comments (love ya’ guys). I found out my previously posted quasi-metaphorical stories of hanging out at my campfire with the eternal were accepted in the spirit intended and not misinterpreted by some jackwit SJW looking for an excuse to spread their own misery. Nice! The comments, both public and private, really made my day! (A handful of “coffees” were nice too!)
Aside from the nice comments and the good people voting, I wound up just plain tired of human interaction. In case you’re wondering, I expected everything in my tiny little rural nowhere to be squeaky clean and it was. Everything I observed was completely up to snuff.
Also, we didn’t have to count many votes (small town y’all) but we did everything by the book and it took no time at all. We closed at 8:00 pm and had a hand counted “audit count” that matched the “machine count” done by 8:30. Half. An. Hour! There was none of this “still waiting on a truckload of ballots from Chicago” crap that infects population centers. We had “completely done, three independent counts of three data streams matches perfectly” in the bag with absolutely zero drama. Yeah it’s a small town but still… Suck it Arizona!
Stay tuned…
My little township has fewer than 100 voters so it’s pretty laid back. The 4 guys running the voting consist of 2 “retired” (farmers never truly retire) farmers, 1 current farmer and the guy who runs the township grader/snowplow. We chat a bit, I vote and I thank them for their service as I head out the door. Thank you for volunteering your time; may your next buck be a 12 pointer.
I’m not surprised to hear that the average voter was pretty much standard garden variety American person. The voters I voted with in early elections were of same variety. Just doing our duty to vote for Our Person or vote against Other Person.
Most of the crazy I saw were the people urging you vote for ‘Their Guy’. Thanks for the description of what it is like to be a judge. It sounds like a thankless job but it needs to be done. If the vote isn’t legit, than why bother voting..