12:03 a.m. - 2004-06-30
recap I
Well that election is history, but with a minority government the betss are already on about how long it will be before the next election. The last minority government was defeated on a financial bill about six months after being sworn in. In Quebec an interview with the leader of the separatists en francais elicitd the comment that the time wasright for another attempt at seceding from Canada based on the seats won yesterday. M DuCeppe then switched to English to declaim that he would never consider separation - just self determination. Hmmmmmm.
Last Monday - taking up where I had to leave off - was the second day of voting in the hospitals and the last day of advance polls. Started off the morning with a strange incident. When I stepped into the office to disarm the alarm I found that the buttons had been jammed up and in to the plate. As soon as I touched them the alarm went off.I grabbed the emergency information out of my purse and called their help line. The woman taking the call explained how to turn off the sirens while the gentleman who is our cleaner stood waiting calmly to start his day. He noted that the company we were using was the one that had been de-licenced for unfair trade practices. I recall that happened about 18 months ago and that there had been an employee or two who had benn charged with helping disarm the units at nights so that theft could occur. Hmmmmm.
I faxed a copy of the tariff of fees to our printer - he was concerned about how much he was going to be paid for the extra work now required to print our ballots. Perforating and such. He said that there was something really odd about how our fax machine was transmitting data and showed me the received copy. It appeared to have been scanned while in transmission. Myoffice co-ordinator called in sick and that was a blow because she keeps everything running so smoothly. Didn't have time to do much of anything because I spent the whole day issuing special ballots to polling day workers. The rule is that they have to pre-vote because they may not be placed at their own polling station. Election day workers may not leave their station for any purpose until the last ballot is counted so they can't vote in the wrong station. By law I am not allowed to provide a transfer certificate to any of them unless they were recruited and hired after the close of special ballots.
Ditto for Tuesday - the last day of special ballots and hospital voting. Everything closed down at 6 pm so we could transmit our results to Ottawa. One of the candidates'reps showed up two hours after the close of polls with about ten people demanding I break the law by issuing special ballots to them. He knew very well that he could not ask for that service since that candidates' campaign organization had gone over the voting drill with me several times. Just testing the boundaries I suppose, but what a crummy way to treat people - pawns - who want to vote for you.
I received a flurry of e-mails from my friend in the Middle East over the two days. All the violence there is finally too much - she's out of there tomorrow. I won't feel calm about her until I actually hear she's made it out. One more sleep to go. I'll write a further installment of adventures in balloting and my foray into my downtown job on Wednesday tomorrow dear diary. I've stopped throwing up, sort of, but I still haven't had any sleep and I have kittens and sons who want to get reacquainted.
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