Indiana Voting
It has definitely been wild seeing Indiana featured so heavily on CNN and the like. CNN keeps going through the voting counts on their "magic wall" and I'm nodding along, "Yes, that county is heavily blue collar ... uh huh, I know LWV members from there ... and there ... yeah, that county is piloting Vote Centers; I wonder how it will affect their numbers?" I don't know yet exactly what happened in Lake County that it took them until freakin' 6:00 am to get their final numbers in, but I couldn't keep my eyes open past 12:30 and fell asleep before CNN called the state for Hillary (barely) at 1:00 am. (Yes, CBS called it earlier, but given that she ultimately won by 22,000 votes out of over 1,000,000 cast, I think they were a bit hasty.)
For the record, our county was counted by 10:30 pm, and that last 45 minutes or so was spent waiting for the courthouse to get the electronic voting counts out. Now this was an interesting (and somewhat ridiculous) situation, because apparently out in certain parts of the county (read: rural areas, not in the city itself where I live), they introduced a few electronic voting machines into play, where instead of a paper ballot, you enter your vote on a touch screen. I was astounded when I heard what we were waiting on because I had no idea we even had such machines in our little backwater. (Bad LWV president, bad!) Altogether, there were about 25 Republican ballots cast on the machines and about 225 Democratic ones -- a ratio created because the rural townships in this heavily Republican state didn't print enough Democratic ballots and thus were pointing the Dems that came in to vote later in the day to the machines in fear of running out. ;)
Unfortunately -- and I'm still boggling over this -- the county didn't allocate each of those electronic votes to the precinct in which it was cast. Instead, they waited until the end of the night, then counted them all together, in one lump sum. Like I am most every election, I was at the newspaper office all evening helping to create a voting results spreadsheet (something my local LWV does to assist our newspaper), so we ended up just adding a 28th "precinct" to our spreadsheet for the newspaper called "Electronic Voting" to account for the additional numbers. Okaaay. Not an ideal situation from my standpoint, but it was either that or miss the paper's deadline altogether.
In the end, our county ended up voting pretty much in line with the rest of the state -- Clinton won, but by the smallest of margins. The lead kept going back and forth all night, literally by handfuls of votes. She ultimately won in our county by just 96 votes out of over 5000 cast. And just like in the rest of the state, Obama won in the city, while Clinton won out in the rural parts of the county.
However, the statistic that I found most interesting was the fact that 48% of our county residents took a Democratic ballot this year, compared to the maybe 20% that usually do so. Now clearly some of this is due to some Republicans switching over to have a say in the presidential primary (though I certainly hope most of them were doing so because they wanted to have a say in who will be our next President, rather than any Rush Limbaugh-suggested shenanigans of voting for Hillary because they think she'll be easier to beat). But a larger portion, I think, is due to the fact that -- hello! We do indeed have Democrats living in this part of the country, thank you very much!
Most local Democrats I know regularly vote in our local Republican primary simply because, all too often, it is the election -- only rarely are there Democratic challengers in the fall general election. But based on the number of people I've spoken with who were so excited to finally have the opportunity to vote for their preferred party in the primary, I think it's safe to say that there are a lot more of us lurking around than most people think when they talk about Indiana. Which means that, at least as far as the popular vote goes, whoever gets the Democratic nod in the presidential race this fall should not be written off, even in a completely red state like mine.
(Not that it would help with the electoral college system of winner-take-all ... but that's a whole 'nother post. *g*)
For the record, our county was counted by 10:30 pm, and that last 45 minutes or so was spent waiting for the courthouse to get the electronic voting counts out. Now this was an interesting (and somewhat ridiculous) situation, because apparently out in certain parts of the county (read: rural areas, not in the city itself where I live), they introduced a few electronic voting machines into play, where instead of a paper ballot, you enter your vote on a touch screen. I was astounded when I heard what we were waiting on because I had no idea we even had such machines in our little backwater. (Bad LWV president, bad!) Altogether, there were about 25 Republican ballots cast on the machines and about 225 Democratic ones -- a ratio created because the rural townships in this heavily Republican state didn't print enough Democratic ballots and thus were pointing the Dems that came in to vote later in the day to the machines in fear of running out. ;)
Unfortunately -- and I'm still boggling over this -- the county didn't allocate each of those electronic votes to the precinct in which it was cast. Instead, they waited until the end of the night, then counted them all together, in one lump sum. Like I am most every election, I was at the newspaper office all evening helping to create a voting results spreadsheet (something my local LWV does to assist our newspaper), so we ended up just adding a 28th "precinct" to our spreadsheet for the newspaper called "Electronic Voting" to account for the additional numbers. Okaaay. Not an ideal situation from my standpoint, but it was either that or miss the paper's deadline altogether.
In the end, our county ended up voting pretty much in line with the rest of the state -- Clinton won, but by the smallest of margins. The lead kept going back and forth all night, literally by handfuls of votes. She ultimately won in our county by just 96 votes out of over 5000 cast. And just like in the rest of the state, Obama won in the city, while Clinton won out in the rural parts of the county.
However, the statistic that I found most interesting was the fact that 48% of our county residents took a Democratic ballot this year, compared to the maybe 20% that usually do so. Now clearly some of this is due to some Republicans switching over to have a say in the presidential primary (though I certainly hope most of them were doing so because they wanted to have a say in who will be our next President, rather than any Rush Limbaugh-suggested shenanigans of voting for Hillary because they think she'll be easier to beat). But a larger portion, I think, is due to the fact that -- hello! We do indeed have Democrats living in this part of the country, thank you very much!
Most local Democrats I know regularly vote in our local Republican primary simply because, all too often, it is the election -- only rarely are there Democratic challengers in the fall general election. But based on the number of people I've spoken with who were so excited to finally have the opportunity to vote for their preferred party in the primary, I think it's safe to say that there are a lot more of us lurking around than most people think when they talk about Indiana. Which means that, at least as far as the popular vote goes, whoever gets the Democratic nod in the presidential race this fall should not be written off, even in a completely red state like mine.
(Not that it would help with the electoral college system of winner-take-all ... but that's a whole 'nother post. *g*)