Election judges and nighttime deer
 | Rob Crowe
Columnist
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One night nearly two decades ago I had a very interesting drive. A relative of mine lived west of Cohasset and one night I visited him, coming home well after nightfall on a clear, cold night with a little mist in late October.
It was about a 30-mile drive, and I saw over 30 deer that night, either standing on the side of the road or moving across in front of the pickup. It was a slow trip, I ended up driving well below the legal speed limit for most of the way.
Last Tuesday night I experienced another drive through a misty night and lots of deer. After spending the day as election judge, the ballots and voting machines had to be taken to Aitkin so a couple of the other judges and I headed out through the mist and deer to deliver the goods to the courthouse.
As usual, this past election has been very interesting. The major difference from the past couple of razor-thin margin elections is that, with the Democrats winning the lion's share of the close races, there are no cacophonous accusations of fraud. The mindset of the Main Stream Media and certain national Democrat leaders seems to be that the Republicans couldn't possibly win otherwise. This is amazing since the people running the elections, the local county auditors, clerks and election judges seldom change much from election to election. In fact, the election judges are supposed to be equally split between the major parties. While in practice this is sometimes difficult to maintain and there may be fraud or deceit at times, I'm certain that honesty prevails at the vast majority of polling places nationwide.
This year the city of Hill City and Hill Lake Township combined polling places, it was a good move on several fronts. Previously, people would go to the wrong place and would have to be re-directed, this move eliminated that problem plus it allowed the county auditor to send the extra electronic vote tabulator to another county precinct.
One upshot of this change is that the Republican chair for Aitkin County (yours truly) was an election judge on one side of the room and the Democratic chair, Jake Niesen, was an election judge on another side of the room. Actually, we probably could have been judges at the same precinct but Jake's wife Margaret is my deputy clerk and an election judge so Jake was relegated to judging for Hill City since spouses cannot judge at the same precinct.
Though most of the judges are intensely interested in the results of the election, the overlying emphasis is in putting on a fair election come election day at this polling place. There was very little political talk, the majority of judges at my table discussed various quilting projects or other seamwork or worked on puzzles during the infrequent lulls.
I wondered what a bi-partisan quilt looked like but was afraid to ask. One voter joked that she was there to cancel out her husband's vote. He came later with the same joke and was quizzed on the more important poll: had he gotten a deer yet? More risk of a fraudulent answer there, well at least more risk of a little embellishment.
After the polls were closed and the tabulator results tapes were put in the secure envelopes along with the tally sheets, it was time to deliver the tabulator and results back to Aitkin.
Since Jake and Margaret had a mini-van and all I had was my big pickup, it was an easy decision to use their van for the task. The round trip was not without event, Jake's foot hit the brake on many occasions to avoid deer, his brakes work well and the seatbelt prevented a collision of my head with the windshield on more than one occasion. The talk was of livestock and service, my son is in Iraq and both of them and all their children have served their country in some branch of service, now Margaret proudly talks about a grandson who is going into the Air Force.
Another election done, the winds of change were blowing against my party, but Jake, Margaret and I, and all the other election officials in the county did our job to ensure a fair, honest election for all our citizens.
Rob Crowe chairs the Aitkin County Republicans and raises kids and cows on a farm near Hill City.
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