Clearing for Sunrise

Public Test of the Election Tabulator today.  Chief Inspector Andy and I met at the town hall.  We rolled out the tabulator and plugged it in.  Yes, still held it's charge.  Andy put in the cartridges for this election while I unpacked the paperwork.  We fired up the machine and then reset the time to one hour earlier.  Pretty sure no law is going to be passed within the next week to stay on Daylight Savings Time so we wanted the tabulator to be set to the time it will be November 3.  One less thing to remember to-do come election day.  

The tabulator spits out an initial list of candidates and how many votes it has for them.  Yes, everyone was on it and the count for each was zero votes.  Since there was no one attending the Public Test it was up to Andy and I to fill out some ballots and feed them through the tabulator.  This is the fun part.  We made sure there was at least one vote for every candidate and there were write-ins.  The tabulator accepted undervotes and rejected overvotes.   We  closed the polls.  The tabulator spit out it's list of candidates and votes again.   I grabbed that and the ballots we had used to check that they matched counts while Andy went through the process of resetting the tabulator back to zero.  

Everything matched - Tabulator showed zero ballots - We shut it down.  We applied seals to the ballot bin, the auxiliary bin, the printer, and the cartridge compartments and recorded the seal numbers on the seal documentation sheet.  (Let the paperwork begin.)   There are meetings in the town hall between now and election day so we didn't set up the room.  We did sit down and talk about what was special about this election.  There are referendum that are printed on the back of the ballot.  As we hand each person a ballot will need to point out that they have to look at both sides.  There is also a groundswell for a registered write-in for a local seat.   Andy is going to a training session on Wednesday where the county clerk will answer any questions including how to report this write-in.  

Managed it all in good time.  Andy chalked it up to good teamwork.