23:12 - 17.01.06
bolts out of the blue
The hospital Special ballot co-ordinators started coming in late in the morning with their kits and ballots. They seemed happy with the work they had done. Their co-ordinator popped by with her husband a bit later carrying in the balance of the supplies. She was quite hyped by the experience and said she'd was eager to try it again - soon. I told her to bite her tongue. A minority government could have us doing all this again in a few months - please say it ain't so. For one thing three elections in leass than three years will cost about a billion dollars. There are better places to invest that money - health, education, community support initiatives.
The agent for the one candidate came in to discuss the voter flood that had come out of their office on Saturday. He admitted there was a dissident group among that party's followers who were determined to oust their party's candidate even if it meant defeat of that party at the polls. Talk abut cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. He stated that they hadn't completely determined what and who was going on but that the incidents at our office had provided some clues. I pointed out that internal party squabbling wasn't my responsibility nor did I have a reason to be involved except for the small issue of the safety of my staff. I told him I really resented anyone who put my workers at risk for personal gain or any reason for that matter. We went on to discuss the technicalities of scrutineers and their rights and responsibilities on polling day. We don't quite see eye to eye on some points but that isn't insurmountable. I draw the line at anything that breaks the law but other issues are negotiable. The democratic process doesn't have to be adversarial in order to be successful does it?
ast day of advance polls started at noon. Once again the worker who has been such a problem because she chooses to ignore the direction she has been given and more often defies outright opened the polls before the legislated time when I had indicated that I would return from a task with special ballots to open that part of the proceedings myself. I walked back to the kitchen and got a cup of tea to calm myself before I dealt with her. Called her in and read the riot act. "I didn't know" was the response. All my sons knew by the age of two not to even try using that excuse. If there wasn't just a week left to go I think I would have fired her on the spot. She won't be part of the office staff next time for certain.
I spent the balance of the afternoon and evening working between crowd control and supervison of the polls in our office and working with my lead recruiter. We really needed to get as many staff allocated to their assigned polling sites and positions so that we had a better read on how much recruiting was necessary. Finally finished that at about 8 pm.
At one point one toward the end of the day one of the revision supervisors came rushing in - big problem with one elector. He was really irate and the staff were feeling very threatened. Remember the last election when I had one person demand to be removed from the list because it created a life threatening situation for him. Well he had been returned to the list yet again. Went and stood beside him apologizing profusely while explaining the problems we are having with the quality of the list - the ressurection of those long dead or moved and the size of the spreadsheet I was building to track all the reports of strange instances that were being reported to us by electors. The minute I pointed out that the federal list was still being drawn from the 1997 enumeration he started to calm down - at least as far as projecting his anger toward my staff. He stated he thought he would be visiting the capital to commit murder there since they insisted on putting his life at risk all the time. Given the flush that was on his forehead and neck I got the feeling that he might not just be blowing off steam. Tried to make a bit of a joke of it by asking him if he really wanted to do jail time for people like that. He didn't see anything funny about it. I walked him out of the office praying that he wouldn't choose to come back. I explained how his name had been expunged last election and told him I would try to erase his presence once again.
Headed back to my office immediately after checking to see if the women who had been subjected to that scene were ok. Some of them had been very upset. They had settled back to their work so I called the head tech in Ottawa and explained the issue once again giving him the details for both this instance and from my diary from last election. I explained the fear he had caused but the head tech didn't really seem to care until I mentioned the threat of going to Ottawa to cause harm. Then he was a little more concerned alright. Got a call first thing this orning from one of the specialists on elector list issues. She acknowledged that Ottawa realized that it was a serious problem and that theperson constituted a danger. She stated that they would look into the matter and get back to me with their decisions. I just let her know that I would not produce the final list for candidates or DROs if that man's information showed up in it. The last thing I want is for him to go into his polling station on voting day and go ballistic because his name is still on the list. Just after he left the local rep for head office arrived. Told her about him but she was more interested in taking photos of our "excellent setup" for advance poll voting. Apparently she thought that the joint efforts and planning of my staff for the event far exceeded expectations. Kudos to them. Her email this morning was about her accident this morning. She had a collision with a deer that decided to take a run down a freeway near the end of town. The deer lost but I think her nerves were a bit shot by then as well.
I had hoped today would be a bit easier, but not so. First up the nightly backp had failed for the third time in one week. The telephones were all ringing at the wrong locals. While I was waiting for one of the head techs to return my call about the crashed server standing at my techs desk I could hear the phone ringing in my assistant's office. I ran to pick it up thinking it could be a call for me because if I don't pick up my phone it defaults to hers. I could see one of our registration people just starting to rise from behind thatt desk as though she had just closed one of the drawer of the unit. She stated that she had heard the assistants phone ringing and had thought it might be important to answer it. Since I had just heard the first ring myself I found it odd that someone who had a much further distance to get there had arrived at that desk before me. I just stated that if she didn't want to be fingerprinted that she shouldn't be in the restricted area because of the ongoing investigation from the first break in. That had her scooting out of there in a hurry but it seemed she continued to try several times during the day to find an excuse to return to the back of the office. My youngest said she had also been asking a lot of questions about where certain confidential files and materials were kept. He felt her interest was excessive and out ofline but I didn't hear what she said so I can't be certain. Registration ended at 6 pm today as did special ballot so I decided it was a good time to end her being scheduled in to work in the office. A lot of the other staff will be called back to help build and fill the ballot boxes but not that one. The fewer possible security risks the better. I had called the police about the missing trainee documents the morning before and had been trying to finish writing the report requested since then. As you can guess from the commentary above dear diary, I still haven't been able to complete that work.
My tech called around noon to ask if things were better. More whine with cheese although he had a good laugh at my expense. You see part of the problem with the aborted back-up had been my fault. I had put a cleaner tape into the drive and forgotten to replace it with the normal one before that operation. My bad. I expect I'll be getting a fair amount of ribbing about that sometime soon. I would have confessed that to the tech I had called in Ottawa except that I didn't read the container until after I hung up from talking with him. Duh. All the same by the end of the day we had done 95% of the preparation necessary to produce our final electors lists as long as tonights backup works and the steps I tried to eradicate that one name from the list worked. My youngest noticed that the Ottawa techs were digging around remotely in the server at the end of the day after I sent him back to reboot the modem. I was trying to finish off some tasks on my own pc but kept getting kicked out of the software. Made me really cranky. The tech we called just laughed along with us as we joked about different things and told me not to worry about it - go home. We got to discussing magic mushrooms and the movie Men With Brooms when he commented that the British Columbian returning offices were experiencing a collective crash of their systems. I claimed it was all their fault and he agred stating that it was that funny tobacco they grow in places there. That's when I reminded him about BC's fame as the magic mushroom capital of the world and that movie you see. As you can tell we are all exhausted enough now that we have reached the giddy stage. Better that coming to blows about things though isn't it?
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