While the attention for the past couple months may have been on all the electoral candidates, the team that managed to get this election up and running could use some recognition as well.
City Clerk Cathy Saunders can’t give her team enough praise,
“I’m just really proud of my staff, I couldn’t have done it without them. They have gone above and beyond.”
A group shot of all the members of the election team.
A group made up of workers from the office of the city clerk spent the last few months hosting information sessions for the ranked ballot, and used many late nights and weekends leading up to the election testing the machines. This same group also manually calculated and confirmed the election results, and moved all the ballots boxes to city hall.
Saunders says this moment feels like a dream,
“I had nightmares leading in, but now I can dream.”
Saunders also explains that this election went relatively smooth this year, just a couple problems with some station wait times. The tabulators also used a single candidate elimination system, which slowed down the results, but it was used in order to provide added transparency to the public, and let them see which candidates were left in their respective races.
With the first ranked ballot election in the history books now, organizations are already curious about using this system in the future, and Saunders says she would consider using the single candidate elimination system in the next election.
