Keeping the Tally

 

A certain subset of Americans has been working for 10+ days, sitting indoors during an airborne-spread virus pandemic, to tally votes.   This post is dedicated to them.  Thank you, election-vote-talliers.  I am grateful to you.

Some of these workers tallying votes are tired, tired, tired.  They have been harassed, crowded upon, falsely accused.  Yet they have stayed on task.  Here’s a description of the process from one election officer in Pennsylvania.

I was an election officer on election day for the past four years.  In 2017, I won an election (!) to become the “Majority Inspector” in my precinct.  This gave me the honor of working for a smidge above PA’s hourly minimum wage rate for 14-15 hours straight, twice a year, to process voters.  Together, my neighbors and I made democracy happen.  Although the conditions of the job are not excellent, it was worth it to me to participate in the election process in this way.  

This year I did not work the primary election, as the spread of covid seemed dangerous.  Silly me.  It was worse by the time the general election rolled around, but I was committed to making sure people in my precinct could vote in person on Nov 3.   

I have spent a portion of my life counting things. It is an activity I like. This is ironic, because I am horrible at mental math – can’t add or subtract in my head to save my life.  But with the aid of spreadsheets, most of my jobs have involved counting things such as corn, soybean, wheat production and trade, grain shipment vessels, members of church, dollars in elderly relatives’ bank accounts, numbers of voters, and, occasionally, the number of small children in the group I have been put in charge of.  This last one has been the most sacred of counting duties.  

Every year at Halloween the Common Household enters into the eternal argument of how much candy to buy.  The Husband buys too much, and I complain that he has bought too much.  It’s a tradition now. I have tried to keep a tally of the number of trick-or-treaters that come to our door, to use to predict next year’s Halloween candy demand.  This attempt failed to reduce the excess candy that enters the house each year.

This year, I only half-heartedly put up Halloween decorations.  But I was delighted to find, inside our Halloween box, three historical documents which I present herewith.

Common Household Trick-or-Treater tally, 1998

In 1998, the Common Household children’s ages were 5, 3, and -0.6 (in utero).   The tally sheet shows that I myself was firmly in charge of the tallying task.  I was aided by a 5-year-old who wrote all her numbers backward but had learned that 10 + 10 = 20.  

Number of trick-or-treaters: 33.

Common Household Trick-or-Treater tally, 2000

The tally for 2000 starts out well, but an interloper hijacks the tally with false data.  The 2020 election tally was secure, but we all know that 2000 had problems, and here is proof.

Number of trick-or-treaters:  who knows?  There is no paper ballot trail.

Common Household Trick-or-Treater tally, 2002

By 2002, our children were 9, 7, and 3 years old.  Our tally team had progressed to graphs and multiplication.

Number of trick-or-treaters:  28.

This year we had 7 trick-or-treaters.  And a lot of leftover candy, which is not a bad thing, considering that my favorite candidate did not win her race.  We must find solace somewhere.