RSS Feed
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From yellow pad tabulations to computer counts
I couldn't help but think about the technological advancements Tuesday as I watched pollworkers bringing in the returns to the Clarke County Courthouse in Grove Hill. That hasn't changed- the actual physical return of the totals from boxes all across Clarke County. Not too many years ago, though, the totals for each race on the ballot had to be opened, reviewed and announced. Several courthouse employees would be recruited to stay on Tuesday nights to help tabulate the votes. Armed with pencils and yellow pads, they listened to the probate judge, local party chairman or someone else "call" the votes and kept a running total of the races. Former Circuit Clerk Harvey Jackson was a frequent caller, as he had a clear and loud voice. Some of the tabulators were good enough to keep up at least two races. The newspaper reporters would prepare a big poster with drawn boxes for each candidate and each polling locations and try to keep up with the often fast-paced calling. I frequently fell behind and had to scramble around and try to play "catch up." The handwritten results would be reproduced in the next day's paper.
Fast forward to today. The voting machines we use now count paper ballots and tabulate the results on a computer pack. Pollworkers return the packs to the probate office where they are slipped into a computer and the totals are automatically recorded and added to the county totals. At the end of the night, totals can be printed out. During big races, a big screen is set up in the main courtroom and the totals are projected on the screen as they are recorded. It is so much easier, faster and less hectic. Tuesday, Probate Judge Becky Presnall remembered coming to the courthouse as a youngster when there was a big blackboard set up and loudspeakers announced the results. The courthouse square would be filled with people, anxiously awaiting the results. By the time I started reporting votes, the blackboard was gone but the loudspeakers would still be set up to announce the results to crowds that mingled in the main hallway. Today, many counties have started posting totals to Internet Web sites as they are tabulated. Clarke County hasn't done that but I am sure the day is coming. The changes are never-ending. Think back to the horse and buggy days when it probably took several days for election results to be returned from all over the county. The development of the automobile and better roads sped up the returns considerably. The arrival of the old mechanical voting machines was viewed as a big technological advancement, too, over paper ballots that had to be counted one by one. Amazingly, we have come full circle and returned to paper ballots today. The big change and improvement is in the way those paper ballots are counted- by computer instead of by hand. However, the integrity of the individual ballots is maintained because those ballots can be counted one by one if they have to be. They had to be a few years back when the county first went to the new system. It was a hotly contested sheriff's race and it took until the wee hours of the morning to do the counting by hand.
Voting procedures and voting tabulation methods may change but the basic idea of a private ballot and "one man, one vote" remains the cornerstone of our democratic form of government. Hopefully, that will never change.
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
)
