3.04.2008

Crazy Night


I hung out at Election Central tonight calling in the results to my webmaster-for-the-night. I'll add more tomorrow. For now, I'm tired.

Edit:
- The County Attorney's race was insane. Marilyn Belew pulled ahead of Thomas Aaberg for the chance to get into the runoff with 2 precincts left. We then had to stand around for 30 minutes waiting for the last two boxes to be counted (why did that take so long?). Marilyn, who has more guts than me, stayed in the room to wait for the final results.
- Although I like all the County Attorney candidates, I'm sick for Thomas who lost by about 30 votes with over 5,000 cast. And it looked like he would be in the runoff until the very end.
- I saw the Sheriff's bride-to-be. Hey, now.
- The Messenger guys are good sports. As much as I give them the business, they are always as nice to me as can be - especially as we scrambled over the released results. I kept proclaiming, in a faux serious voice, "The Messenger's blocking me! The Messenger's blocking me!" (And, when they had a little screw up with their addition of the votes on their web site, I didn't have any problem bringing it to their attention. It was a mistake easy to make. I made a couple myself along the way.)
- Kevin Huffman, Doug Parr, and Gary Emmert came by to watch the results. All good guys.
- Three Justices of the Peace showed up even though they weren't in any contested race.
- I can't believe I wasn't single handily able to bring down Phil King. Man, whenever you have that much name recognition, you can win as long as you want. (And I heard he was a Muslim who goes to a church that pledges its allegiance to Africa!!)
- There was almost an hour wait between early voting and the first results. And I promise that the word was given that even though two precincts had reported, those votes weren't going to be released because "we don't want to waste paper." I thought there was going to be a riot.
- That Joe Duty was everywhere snapping pictures.
- Speaking of riots, there was talk of a fight breaking out in the Blewitt voting site with Sheriff deputies called out to break it up. Good times.
- The vote counts went a lot smoother when Republican Chair Allen Williamson came in to help out with the distribution. He's a born showman.
- So much for a black man getting votes in Wise County (reference: Obama.) Pretty cool Google map break down here.
- It's no surprise that David Walker was re-elected Sheriff but the margin of victory continues to be mind-boggling.
- That messy blotch up by Phil King's name is the result of "White Out" being used to cover up an old permanent mark. It was not caused by my Barry Tears rolling down my Barry Cheeks. Maybe.