Once more unto the electoral breach
All things considered, yesterday's midterms went fairly smoothly at Precinct 811 (Pohick), located at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in West Springfield. The new chief officer and one of the other election officers were able to show up Monday afternoon and get mostl the signage, chairs, tables, etc. up so that Tuesday morning all we had to do was wade through the setup paperwork, get signed in, set up the two voting machines and the two electronic pollbooks, and we were ready to open at 0600. We never had any big lines - at most, there were 3-4 people waiting to check in and get ballots, and 3-4 people waiting to get their ballots scanned. We had a ton of election officers on hand - surprisingly, about a third of them were Independent or Green for once. Turnout was low - about 36%, which was not a good sign for the Democrats since this is traditionally a very blue precinct, going heavily for Obama and Kaine in 2012. Warner and Connolly both carried the precinct, but it wasn't a blowout by any means - both of them won by less than 100 votes and there was a considerable dropoff from Warner to Connolly. Breakdown went as quickly as setup, with some of the officers taking stuff down early, and we didn't have any lines outside when we locked the doors. We did all the paperwork involved with shutting down and reconciling votes to ballots, and we were all out by 2015. Good show.
I want to talk for a minute about the local GOP organization (presuming there actually is one) as a valedictory since this was my last election as a Fairfax County election officer and as a resident of the county; the Virginia GOP no longer has primaries, which I think is an utterly retarded move that just feeds into the enemy narrative, and now does all the endorsing at the state convention as far as I can tell. Ever since arriving in Springfield as a registered Republican, I have had more contact with the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action PAC than I have with the local GOP. No Republican candidate for Congress or the state House has knocked on my door or so much as sent me a postcard in the mail. None of them have tried to call me. It's more than a little irritating, so much so that in the last state election, after the Democratic incumbent delegate stopped by to doorknock (we had a polite little discussion) I was so annoyed by her GOP opponent's failure to do the same that I wound up voting independent out of spite.
How hard is it for the local Republicans to get a copy of Heinlein's Take Back Your Government
and use it as a blueprint for building a competitive machine here in Fairfax County? The spread between Connolly and Scholte was not that big, and a little bit of doorknocking or other personal contact might have been enough to swing the hundred votes needed to take the precinct.
Well, not my problem any more. I am off for Las Vegas next year, and it'll take me probably a year or two to get unpacked and settled in before I even want to start thinking about being politically active. In the meantime, wake up, RPV. What you're doing now isn't working nearly well enough.
I want to talk for a minute about the local GOP organization (presuming there actually is one) as a valedictory since this was my last election as a Fairfax County election officer and as a resident of the county; the Virginia GOP no longer has primaries, which I think is an utterly retarded move that just feeds into the enemy narrative, and now does all the endorsing at the state convention as far as I can tell. Ever since arriving in Springfield as a registered Republican, I have had more contact with the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action PAC than I have with the local GOP. No Republican candidate for Congress or the state House has knocked on my door or so much as sent me a postcard in the mail. None of them have tried to call me. It's more than a little irritating, so much so that in the last state election, after the Democratic incumbent delegate stopped by to doorknock (we had a polite little discussion) I was so annoyed by her GOP opponent's failure to do the same that I wound up voting independent out of spite.
How hard is it for the local Republicans to get a copy of Heinlein's Take Back Your Government
and use it as a blueprint for building a competitive machine here in Fairfax County? The spread between Connolly and Scholte was not that big, and a little bit of doorknocking or other personal contact might have been enough to swing the hundred votes needed to take the precinct.
Well, not my problem any more. I am off for Las Vegas next year, and it'll take me probably a year or two to get unpacked and settled in before I even want to start thinking about being politically active. In the meantime, wake up, RPV. What you're doing now isn't working nearly well enough.