Its official. The returns are in to the Board of Elections and I couldn't be happier to have this long day at the precinct be over. My duty today was to oversee the precinct of Cambridge 1B at St Benedict's Catholic Church in Cambridge. Our total voting rolls listed 568 voters, of which 394 voted. This is a turnout of 69%, exactly what our county Board of Elections had estimated.

Last night I set up the punch card voting systems at my precinct and got everything ready to roll. Unfortunately the cell phones we were promised by the BOE never came through. I'm told the deal fell through at the last minute. Luckily two of my workers brought their cells with them. Its a good thing too, since we made several calls of import to the BOE.

We had no issues with witnesses, challengers, agressive campaigners, etc in this part of Ohio. The stories of gloom and doom in the old media seem to have been overhyped and overplayed. Despite the fact that rural voters were courted heavily by the Bush campaign, media coverage seemed to focus on the metros of the three C's: Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinatti.

Aside from 15 labor intensive provisional ballots, there were no substantial problems of any kind at my precinct. My only regret is that a minor discrepancy resulted in a few missing signatures. This was not a case of fraud- just a case of tired election workers trying to keep up with the high turnout. Considering the 99% of those who voted quickly without even a minor problem, I'm proud of my team and myself for what we accomplished.


I'm glad I did this today. At no point did it approach the absolute living hell that I thought it might become.

Oh well. There's always 2008. . .