Election Oddities

By John Semmens

In the New Hampshire town of Columbia, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) received 1106 votes. Her opponent Don Bolduc (R) received 193 votes. The town of Columbia has a total population of 695 persons. New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley attributed the numerical discrepancy to "the possibility that Democrats might have been more enthusiastic about voting than the Republicans were.'

In Pennsylvania, on election night Delaware County Board of Elections officials routed a van carrying ballots to a closed building out of sight of poll watchers. Six hours later these ballots were added to the official tallies. Laureen Hagan, Chief Clerk, Bureau of Elections suggested that "the peace and quiet of the offsite building probably made completing the count easier."

In California, a bag containing one or two dozen ballots was found in a ravine in the Santa Cruz Mountains. These votes were added to the official tallies. Alfred Gonzales, Election Division Coordinator, said "although there was no 'chain-of-custody' to verify whether these ballots were cast by registered voters we felt rather than disenfranchise these ballots from unknown voters it would be better to just count them. After all, someone went to the trouble to fill them out. We shouldn't let that effort go to waste."

In Arizona's Maricopa County, 30% of the voting locations experienced problems accepting and/or tallying ballots. Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor complained that "these problems effectively disenfranchised unknown thousands of voters in this Republican majority county. Many working people could not afford the lengthy delays. Others were advised to place their uncounted ballots in a mysterious 'door three' box."

Her opponent Secretary of State Katie Hobbs dismissed Lake's complaint, saying "given all the times I've heard MAGA Republicans say they'd crawl over broken glass to vote against me, I'm surprised that a little delay at some of the polls could dissuade them from casting their ballots. Anyway, no one can prove that the election day problems were intentional. After all, Lake herself said the election was being run by imbeciles. She should have anticipated that there might be problems and urged her followers to vote early or by mail like most Democrats did."

In other election news, Berlin’s highest court declared the September 26th, 2021 elections held for state parliament, state senate, and national Bundestag to be redone because of election day problems including insufficient numbers of ballots, long lines, and early poll closures. An unknown number of voters were disenfranchised. The chaos was deemed "too severe for the declared results to be permitted to stand."