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I kind of doubt there was a huge turnout yesterday for the local election. But the two items I was most interested in ended sort of ok. One was for library board members as I wrote about yesterday. At the end of the day, four of the six running were elected, 3 of whom were those who opposed the use of the library drag queen events and other gender events. Only one who was in favor was re-elected.
It will be interesting to see how things go in the future, and who has the majority on the board.
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We are looking at local offices tomorrow. City Council, County Boards, School Boards, Library Boards, township boards etc. Many offices have candidates with no competition, others have several people vying for the office. Historically these elections have low turnouts which has always puzzled me. Yes, the national and state elections are important, but local elections deal with who will decide things where we live.
One race has garnered more attention than others which is odd because it is for spots on the library board.. Who knew our library board race would get attention? Today's St. Louis Post Dispatch had a long front page article on the library candidates and why they are in the spotlight. Seriously, this front page story is long. It boils down to the emotionally mixed reaction to the recent Drag Queen Show the library put on for children.
We are living in a new age. I was on the library board for 12 years and I can tell you, that board would be horrified. But it's a different age. It's a sorry thing that this area has no local paper as in the past when local news kept things up to date twice a week. This drag queen show got some attention on Facebook, but in general it got lost. Maybe after today, if people read the Post Dispatch, more will know. In order to read it online you have to register a user name and password. I can link it, but nothing will show up. I'm glad we got the paper today, everyone should have.
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Fox2 in St. Louis reported that city election day poll workers will be receiving a big boost in pay. It seems they currently do not have enough people to run the precincts efficiently and hope more money will bring in more workers. This election 300 dollars will be the pay. This is fair in my opinion. Working elections, which I did for over 20 years, can be very tiring and very boring on those times when very few voters care to come and vote. You must get to the precinct at least an hour before the polls open to set up, sit around all day until they close. After that is verifying the ballot counts etc, and taking them all to some official drop off place. Long day.
I looked to see what Madison County is paying this year. It's 125 dollars now with an extra 25 for attendance at the pre-election briefing. Also an extra 35 if doing nursing home ballots. Not bad, but frankly some election days go from 5 in the morning til 8 or 9 at night with many hours of just sitting and watching the clock move slowly. Madison County election people have long made sure everyone knew what they were doing and ran very efficient elections.
I did enjoy doing this however, and hope there are still people who will continue working the polls.
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I was looking over the sample ballot for today's Illinois primary election and I was kind of overwhelmed by all the offices involved and the candidates I have never heard of. This is not a good thing and at one point in time it was not the case because this area had good local papers which kept us regularly informed on what was going on locally and by whom.
The loss of newpapers is a sad loss.
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Now this takes the cake. I find this hard to believe. The April 6th local election in Madison County hasn't been finalized and there are several races still uncertain. It appears as though all the mail in ballots postmarked by April 6 are still to be counted. Apparently there are hundreds.
I am not sure how many races will be impacted by this but we shall see. The county clerk will begin tabulating these ballots on April 20 through the 27th.
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Here are the winning candidates from the Collinsville ballot.
For city council- Donna Green
For Collinsville Township Supervisor:
Derrick Keith Cox
Highway Commissioner:
Kathy Trucano Hoelscher
Trustees:
Clint Ball
Matthew Guenther
Brad Sewell
Ashley Stewart
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Local offices will be up for election tomorrow with most of us voting in the same precinct as always. In Collinsville the city council has only one race and with incumbent Donna Green running against David Jerome.
The Township has received the most attention with several seats up for grabs. For Supervisor- Derrick Keith Cox versus Daniel Hopkins. Township Trustees have 8 people running for 4 seats and the ballot allows you to vote for 4 of the 8.
ROBERT MILAM
PAUL RYDGIG
BRAD SEWELL
ASHLEY CHRISTINE STEWART
AARON WRIGHT
MATTHEW GUENTHER
CLINT BALL
JASON REHG
The other 3 Township offices have only one person running. Assessor-Pete Poletti Clerk-Jim Achenbach and Highway Commissioner-Kathy Trucano Hoelscher
Too often most local elections see really really low turnouts. It's your opportunity to vote for people who most affect you where you live. Go Vote. It's a good thing to do. And, it gives those election judges something to do during a really really long day.
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I read this look at presidential election history and frankly, I thought it was extraordinary and astonishing. Matt Dawson wanted to learn if any past presidential election at all mirrored what was going on this year. He came across the Truman v Dewey year and boy, was it similar to 2020. The one thing we all learned in history class was from the Chicago Tribune headline blasting, Dewey Wins! But there was so much more. Read the whole thread if you're able, what an amazing piece of history.
I have no idea who is going to win today, most experts believe it will be Biden. But who knows these days, it's 2020 after all. What I do know is I am not going to sit around watching cable news all day.
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We got up early (as always) and left for our precinct around 5:30 this morning. It was dark out and we were in a line outside the Collinsville Senior Center for about 15 minutes or so and inside for another 7 before the 6 a.m. voting began. I was the second voter and Dale was the third. He ended up being the 4th person to submit his ballot to the tabulator judge, but he took a couple minutes longer to go over his ballot.
The Senior Center has two precincts, 1 and 2, which lessened the wait a bit as there are two rooms.
What surprised me was having all ballots be the fill in the circle type, not touch screen machines. I guess this is due to the virus and helping to cut down on many people touching the screens. I like getting to keep my pen more than the little stickers given out in the past.
So we did our civic duty and now can sit back and watch how thing go today.
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I just hope we won't be facing another 2000 election. Or, a 2016 election with half the country refusing to accept the results. It'll be what it is. But here is a question I've wondered about and maybe many others have as well. When are the early voting ballots actually tabulated?
Tabulating the ballots is not the same as counting the early ballots. The early ballots are processed at various times according to individual state election laws. Processing is comparing the signature on the outside envelope to the signature on file in the official record. Each state has their own time for doing this. In Illinois it is two days before the election, in Missouri five days before. But the ballot in the sealed envelope is not opened at this time in most states.
The actual tabulation of early ballots are normally counted and added to the in-person ballots at the end of the election day. In Illinois this is done after 7 pm on election day when the polls have closed. I remember this very well during my years as a judge. In Missouri it is on election day as is true of most states. There are a few outlier states as usual. Those ballots are then opened and put into the tabulating machine.
Here is a chart showing how all the states handle the processing and actual tabulating.
I find all this fascinating and frustrating while listening to many news reports trying to explain this. In the end, a state may have x number of early vote ballots but none (mostly) will be putting them into a machine til election day. So no one knows right now who is benefiting from them. No news report can be believed if they tell us such and such a state's early voting results show one or the other ahead. They can't know this til the polls close.
And, one last thing. Voting is left to the counties and most are well prepared for any eventuality such as voting machine breakdown, the education of the on site judges, etc. Madison County has always made sure the local judges know what's what and why. Plus they are often the most efficient at getting the results out to the public quickly.
Counties who always seem to have problems is mostly due ( in my opinion) to the lack of preparing the on sight election workers.
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