Dunder atop the kitchen cabinets

Once again, a beautiful day in the neighborhood.  It did rain a bit overnight and was misting this morning during the constitutional.  Kind of a 'spritz' to keep everything fresh.  This morning was the Public Test before next week's primary election.  A Public Test of the voting machine is, by state law, always held within the ten days before an election, is announced in the paper the week prior, and is open to the public to observe.  The other Chief Inspector and I met at the town hall.  We set up the tabulator that counts the votes and used some actual ballots to test the machine.  It is a primary for a number of offices - governor, lt. governor, senator, congress rep, state rep, sheriff, etc.   First thing to mention to voters: The ballot is printed on both sides.   This is a partisan primary so voters must pick a party and only vote for people running within that party.  Second thing to tell voters - be sure to fill in the circle specifying which party you are voting for.   On the ballot, all of the Democratic offices and candidates are listed first followed by the Republicans (which are partially on the front and partially on the back), followed by the Libertarians, and then the Constitutional Party.  Third thing is to remind voters to look for where their party's area begins and ends on the ballot.  We tested voting for each of the parties, under voting, over voting for an office, writing in names, and crossing over parties.  The tabulator kicked out ballots where it couldn't tell what the voter wanted and accepted the ballots where it could.  We closed the test, printed out the final tabulation, and checked each office against how we 'voted'.  The final tally was correct.  We marked the ballots we used as "Public Test."  They get sent back to the County Clerk's office (but separate from the voter's ballots) so that all of the ballots we received can be accounted for.  Set the tabulator's count back to zero, closed down the machine and put on the locks which will remain in place until election day.  We are ready.  Hope the voters are too.