As the presidential vote count drags on, those videos you see of dozens of people hunched over tables and diligently counting mail-in ballots are misleading. They’re just stock footage of an American Idol vote count.
In reality, each state has only two people counting ballots. Their names and Carol and Jake. It’s like this in all the close states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina. Each has just two people counting, coincidentally with the same names, and they have their charming quirks.
Jake needs absolute silence or he will not be able to count any of the ballots. State election officials have complied and set him up in an acoustically baffled room, and hundreds of officials watch him from the other side of a glass partition. Around 2 a.m. in Michigan, someone in the counting warehouse coughed, and Jake had to start all over with Wayne County. Wisconsin’s Jake got distracted by a fly buzzing so he was delayed counting votes in the WOW counties by an hour.
Carol can’t be rushed in counting because it makes her very nervous. So she’s been going over the votes in Atlanta one by one, slowly picking up each and mouthing the results silently to herself. In Pennsylvania, a supervisor casually asked her how the vote count was coming in Bucks County and she got so flustered that she had to sit quietly outside for 45 minutes and cool down.
So if you’re hoping to know soon which man will be president, and what kind of country this will be, think of each state’s Jake and Carol. They’re hard at work—just don’t tiptoe too loudly around Jake or try to hurry Carol along. We’ll get our results in good time.
(Sorry. When I’m anxious, sometimes I try to be funny. For a more serious take see yesterday’s entry.)
No comments:
Post a Comment