Up for the Count

Some heroes don’t wear uniforms. Sometimes, staying up late is all it takes.

In all the mess, it’s easy to forget the people who worked hard to get it right the first time.

**********

By 10 p.m. on Election Eve in the courthouse at Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, polling officials from each of the county’s 53 voting districts had returned stacks of ballots.

About 100 people – election judges, courthouse employees, reporters and assorted stragglers – had gathered in the building’s main lobby. Some munched on complimentary snacks, others smoked cigarettes. The din of conversation was deafening.

They were wondering why they couldn’t go home.

* * * * * * * *

The room that usually serves as a weekly meeting place for Huntingdon County’s commissioners had been transformed into Election Central, where about a dozen county workers and commissioners rushed around like ants whose home had just been poked with a stick by a giant fourth grader.

The machine – the machine that was to tabulate the ballots cast by all of Huntingdon County’s 45,000 voters in the 2000 election – had broken down.

On folding tables and folding chairs and the floor and on every piece of furniture in the room, thousands of ballots were stacked, uncounted.

Usually, they were better than halfway done by this time.

Sandra McNeal and Eydie Miller were the two women in the room not to mess with. Serving as county elections clerk and chief clerk respectively, the two were pushing buttons frantically on the machine, trying to figure out the problem. In trial runs, it had worked fine. In years past, it had worked fine. But now, less than two hours before midnight, it was on the fritz.

It was swallowing ballots two or three at a time, and gumming up its own works. McNeal and Miller could count a few votes in five minutes, then they would have to reach into the machine’s innards and pull out a handful of ballots and start over again.

They kept trying. Meanwhile, the county’s three commissioners had gathered in the lobby to talk to reporters, knowing full well that word of the breakdown would get out eventually. Soon, they would have about 60 to 70 very impatient election judges on their hands. Damage control was a top priority.

“It’s looking like we’ll be ordering McDonald’s for breakfast,” said Alexa Cook, Republican chair of the county commission. Usually poised and camera-ready, hours of not sitting down had left Cook looking sleepy-eyed. Her colleagues, Republican Kent East and Democrat Roy Thomas, had loosened their ties.

“Oh yeah,” said East. “We’re gonna see the sun come up.”

* * * * * * * *

In a best-case scenario, everyone figured, the votes would be counted by 2 a.m. A best-case scenario would involve the machine miraculously starting to operate properly, and the ballots being run through in record time.

It was still jamming.

The device was a monster, a beige behemoth covered in blinking Star Trek lights. Attached to its top was a dot-matrix printer which spat out the results of the count; on the bottom was a space to stack ballots that the machine would pull through its mechanisms. There is nary a chad to be found in Huntingdon, where voters fill in ovals with a pencil, SAT-style. The machine reads the dark marks much like ScanTron devices read standardized tests.

Gathered in Election Central were numerous county employees: Grant administrators, planners, a lawyer, a recycling coordinator, even an intern. Most sat in chairs, offering jokes and moral support to McNeal and Miller, who took turns listening to elevator music over the phone. Tech support for the tabulating machine was on the other end of the line, trying to figure out what the problem was.

East had his sleeves rolled up to the elbow and had shoved his arm into the machine, probing to see what was jamming it. From time to time, he would peer at it displays, as if probing it psychically.

“I can see the headline now: Commissioner Works on Machine,” joked the county’s recycling director. “Get the camera.” East grinned.

After more than an hour and a half of no progress, it was all they could do. For now, tech support was the key. All they could do was wait for the hold music to stop.

“I just hate not doing anything,” said a county planner. “I just want to be busy.”

* * * * * * * *

Meanwhile, in the lobby, the mood was darkening. The fruit tray was empty, and the pumpkin bread was nearly gone. Three lonely broccoli florets were all that was left of the crudite.

Most of those present were poll workers from the county’s dozens of municipalities. Before they could go home, they had to get certified results from the county officials, and nobody had come out of the office in a while. Some of the poll workers had kids with them. Most others were elderly.

Miller decided to do what she’d most feared she’d have to do: Tell them to go home without the certified results. That meant someone would have to travel to each voting precinct in the county the next day, delivering the results so they could be posted.

Driving straight without stopping, it takes a speedy driver about an hour and fifteen minutes to get from one end of Huntingdon County to the other.

At 10:30, a cheer went up in the lobby as people gathered up their coats and their kids.

In the basement of the courthouse, the phone was ringing. Reporters from Huntingdon’s daily newspaper have a deal with Miller and McNeal: They get the election results before anyone else, provided they man the courthouse phones all night. Most calls that come in are from local television affiliates and radio stations, and newspapers too far away to send their own reporters.

Locals watching television that night saw only 30 percent of Huntingdon County precincts reporting by 11:30.

* * * * * * * *

McNeal was on her shift listening to hold music. All the red lights were blinking on the machine.

“Can we all pray?” asked Miller.

Soon after that, she made her next announcement: Anyone else that wanted to go home could do so. She and McNeal could handle whatever came up, with the help of maybe one other person, most likely a commissioner. Everyone else that wanted to could leave. Nobody had the next day off, after all.

Nobody moved. The intern, who was from a local college and had a midterm at 8 a.m. the next morning, eventually went home. But nobody else moved.

Meanwhile, tech support had taken McNeal off hold and was telling her what to do.

* * * * * * * *

Miller was using rubbing alcohol to swab something in the machine called a “retard pad.” It was all the advice tech support could give.

Nobody was saying anything.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s try it again.”

McNeal fed it a fistful of ballots, and flipped the switch.

The second cheer of the evening went up. This one was weaker, wearier, and not as loud as the first, but no less mighty.

The machine went clackity-clackity-clackity as it counted ballots. But after about 100, it jammed again.

That was good enough, they decided. To try any harder to fix it would jeopardize getting it done at all. As it went longer, people would get sleepy-eyed, and possibly less accurate. The trick now was to get the ballots counted as quickly as possible.

By 3 a.m., they were done. Every vote had been tabulated.

Despite East’s prediction, nobody saw the sun come up.