Campaign results in local campaigns are usually in within 20 minutes to an hour of the polls closing. Last night, with hardly anything on the ballot . . . it was hours.
There was ONE Dane County Board primary and I was interested in the results. Progressive Dane endorsed two of the candidates and I was (slightly) working on Rob Dz Franklin’s campaign. Normally, campaigns send volunteers to the polls and when the polls close the poll workers can run an extra tape out of the machines and give the campaigns the results and then the volunteers call them in and often we know the results within 20 – 30 minutes. Since there was only one primary, that didn’t seem necessary.
Man, was I wrong.
At 8:30, the clerk’s website still have ZERO results. That seemed odd.
Refresh, refresh, refresh . . . results! . . . from 2015 . . . refresh, error, refresh, error, refresh, no results, refresh no results, refresh, error, refresh, 2015 results, refresh, error, refresh . . . battery d-r-a-i-n-i-n-g. 8:35, 8:45, 8:55, 9:05 . . . screw it, I’m going to the clerks office . . .
Well, obviously the clerks were busy and I didn’t want to bother them. There were lines at the county and city clerks workers bringing in the results. I went to the city clerk’s office first, cuz clearly the county clerk had issues to deal with.
I patiently waited, Maribeth Witzel-Behl (the City Clerk) walked by me and I asked about results in District 1, she told me they were sending them in now and that I should check with the county as they have the results. So I walked across the hall and talked to the staff who were just looking at the website and had no results. I talked to her for a while, she said they were waiting for the modems to send in the information. I hung out for a while. Then I saw Scott McDonell (the county clerk). I asked him if he had any results. He said he had them right there in his hands (a thumbdrive), but then he was asking staff for the keys to the 5th floor to go upload them. I asked if he had any results, he told me to ask Mike Basford because (the Democrats, working on the opponents campaign) had the results. I left the clerks office and drove back to the party, checking facebook on the way where Basford has posted his candidate came in first, I swallowed my pride and asked him for the numbers. He and another person from the campaign sent me the numbers. The opponents!
We waited, waited, waited. When I left the campaign party at 10:00, after the announcement of the results, the city clerk’s office still didn’t have the results up.
Hopefully the general election goes smoother. It seemed so odd to have referendum results from Marshall and New Glarus before the district where the clerks offices are located. I’m not sure which clerk’s office or what technology are the cause of the delay, but I hope they figure it out before the general election. However, for that, we will have volunteers gathering results!!!
