The Kissell recount; my experience as an observer

[Hudba]

Here are some of my observations from the machine recount in Cabarrus County last Tuesday:

I arrived at the board of elections at 9.45 and found out that the recount had started at 9.15, not 10.00 like I was told.

The Observers were 2 young "bimbos" that worked for Hayes, A lady called Firth that worked for the U.S. House (but that obviously was a republican) and Me. An hour later Larry G. (Chair of the cabarrus GOP) arrived. So it was me and 4 republicans.
A reporter for the Observer also showed up in the afternoon, together with a photographer.

In Cabarrus County we voted by way of optical scan on election day and touch screen for the early vote.

I had a printout handed to me that explains in detail what procedure they followed for the recount. They basically just fed all the ballots through 2 M650 counting machines. Whatever ballot was not counted by the machine (machine "spits" it out), was handed to a panel of 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans who did an eye/hand recount on those.

They did all the precincts in numerical order and then fed the provisional ballots through the machine.
Especially with the provisional ballots, the machine stopped a lot and all those ballots had to be counted by hand by the panel.

Some ballots were longer/taller than others, usually between 1/4 and 1/2 inch longer than the regular ones, but that did not seem to hamper the machine.I guess whoever made the ballots did not cut those off properly.

I saw some examples of ballots where the voter obviously did not know how to properly vote.
On one ballot the voter used the pen to punch holes(!) in the ovals instead of just coloring in the ovals (guess he liked the old system better). If it makes you feel better, this person voted for Hayes. On another ballot the voter drew arrows pointing towards the person he wanted to vote for.
In all those cases the ballots got handled by the panel and these peoples votes WERE counted.

The recount stopped at 2.45 pm and at 3.15 (after a board meeting) we got the official result:

Kissell 11,464
Hayes 17,502

Kissell gained 15 votes, Hayes 13 votes, so a net gain for us of 2.

The funniest part of the day was hearing the woman that worked in the House and the 2 Hayes "bimbo's" talk about all the people they knew that were leaving the House now since the Dems kicked their behinds out. They were feeling really sad...
It took a lot for me not to burst out in hysterical laughter.

Update: After the machine recount, Larry just asked for a hand recount. The manual recount of all ballots in about 3% of the precincts is next week.
:applause:

[NCarolinawoman]

1. Thank you so much for doing this.

I read a blurb in the News and Observer implying that if Kissell had had more money he might have won this thing outright. It was one of those "arrows up and arrows down" deals.

Do you have a feel that this lack of money was the ultimate problem? :(

[Hudba]

2. yes, a little more money and we'd be celebrating.

There is no doubt in My mind that if the DCCC had given Larry $100,000 before the election we'd be celebrating now.
Voters here had to endure an avalanche of negative ads from the Hayes campaign, if we'd had $100,000 to really reply to those we'd have won for sure.
What makes it very ironic is that the DNC is probably spending more money than that now on lawyers and such.:banghead:
We could have saved them money...hate to say I told you so.

I'm sure though that even if Larry would lose this one, the next time they'll know this race is winnable and we'll get some decent financial help from the DCCC.:eyes:

[NCarolinawoman]

3. Interesting and frustrating.

I live in Wake county so I never saw any ads. I can't imagine how anyone could go negative on Larry Kissell. I guess they had to go the "San
Francisco Liberal" route. I'm so sorry.

[Jane Eyre]

4. Negative ads

There were a couple of really stupid negative ads that would have been very easy for the Kissell campaign to rebut had there been funds to do so. One ad accused him of violating campaign finance law. In actuality, a campaign finance report was filed late - hardly a major abuse of campaign finance law. Another radio ad, run on local right-wing radio during the Rush Limbaugh show, said that MoveOn.org was paying for $100,000 in ads against Hayes and that MoveOn.org was a left-wing fringe organization that supported the terrorists. I kid you not.

But the one that ran most often was the one stating that Larry Kissell opposed the Medicare Part D program that helped so many seniors, and even called it a waste. Hayes ran lots of feel-good ads talking about how he supported the Medicare D program that helped so many seniors. Watch for more of these on a bigger scale soon, because Big Pharma is not going to let go of its gravy train easily by allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices which would eliminate the "doughnut hole". The truth is that a lot of folks HAVE saved some money under Medicare Part D no matter how much better it COULD have been. Remember the "Harry and Louise" ads of the early 90's, the ones that sunk Hillary's health care initiatives by convincing people that liberals were trying to torpedo the best health care system in the world? Are you better off today? Did the health insurance industry make a huge profit off of their misleading advertisements? Get ready for more of the same. It's coming....

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

5. did you also observe Mecklenburg? looking for observers from Meck

I am looking for folks who observed the Mecklenburg Recount.

I have been passed an "unofficial" account that indicates
that the recount was not done properly.

I.e that if the paper differed from the machine count,
the counters were told to count again until "they got it right."

Please PM me if you observed Meck, or if you know anyone who did.