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Don’t Forget To Vote Today

 May 25, 2010 ⋅  Post a comment

While today’s election is only a primary, it serves to decide several county races–since there are no Dem opponents–and the Supreme Court seat is also decided today.

FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE at the Ada County website.

If you are a loyal Dem, don’t forget to go out and vote for the worst candidate and if you are a loyal Repub, go find your best candidate, but PLEASE go to the polls if you haven’t voted early or by mail.

The Supreme Court race between Lewiston district court Judge John Bradbury and Supreme Court Justice Roger Burdick has had some interest. Bradbury is somewhat of a maverick and has run before and Burdick has plenty of endorsements from lawyers, but a last minute advertising boost from an independent group appears to be afoul of the campaign finance laws.

Don’t forget to drop by Papa Joe’s at University and Capitol after 5 p.m. Thursday to rehash everything at the GUARDIAN 5th BIRTHDAY PARTY.

A FACT SHEET from Ada County about elections follows:

• Approx. 750 election workers on duty in Ada County
• Mostly paid temporary election workers
• Some County employees
• Approx. 120 workers at the election headquarters today/night
• Approx. 650 workers at the polling places
• Workers started at 7am this morning and generally work until midnight or the early morning hours.
• We start to see ballots arrive at election headquarters around 8:30pm. The results from counted ballots may not be released until after 9pm to accommodate the closing of the polls in northern Idaho precincts.
• There are currently approx. 198,000 registered voters in Ada County
• Ada County expects approx. 20-25% voter turnout in the county
• We saw approx. 21% turnout during the last Primary in 2006
• 1,888 people have voted early by voting at the Elections office
• 6,632 people requested absentee ballots and 3,909 have been returned by mail as of this morning. We continue to accept ballots from people who personally drop them off at the Elections office until 8 p.m. Election night.
• Counting process
• Ballots are delivered to the Elections office
• Box is logged in as received and taken to verification station
• Verification station logs receipt of ballots and verifies that none are torn, no major problems with the ballots, etc.
• Ballots are then delivered to seven counting stations where they’re processed by the optical scan counting machines
• Each machine counts approx. 50 – 200 ballots per minute
• Scanners count votes on BOTH the front and back of the ballot at the same time
• Results from scanners are then fed to Web site for public display
• Votes are unofficial until canvass which usually takes a few days
• Absentee precincts and early voter ballots to be counted first
• We hope to release the absentee results at 9:00 pm
• These first numbers MAY be a good indicator of how the candidates will fair tonight as these ballots are representative of the entire county and NOT just specific precincts

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