Naturally our poll was the slowest to count the votes. Having said that, I was still able to leave at 10:30. I rushed home to find out that practically no results were reported for the city councilors. It seemed to me that the only councilor positions that were tabulated on the web site were the colistières of the party leaders.

The problem is, it's extremely easy to be first, and it's also fairly easy to be accurate. It's only when they try to attempt both simultaneously, that they run into trouble. But the we-must-be-first-at-all-costs! attitude persists.

And, as you so correctly point out, they want to rely almost entirely on some government entity posting numbers to a Web site in order to obtain their data, and then complain when the data turns out to be (a) not timely; (b) not accurate, or (c) neither timely nor accurate.

What the hell good is it if I can read incorrect numbers on a media outlet's Web site? I'd rather wake up in the morning and read accurate numbers in an actual newspaper, than read inaccurate numbers on a newspaper's Web site before I go to bed.

...and they say the business model is broken. Well, no wonder.

I pointed out that we had the future in 2005, but the optical-scan machines weren't used this time, apparently because they caused problems.

More than 25 years working in computers made me extremely suspicious of electronic voting. There is no way I could trust a process where the works are not entirely transparent and obvious to anyone.
Paper ballots are simple, and easy. Children can use the methodology, and anybody can watch the process to insure there is no fiddling; in fact, candidates can post representatives at each poll to make sure procedures are properly followed.
Not so with a computerized black box. You push buttons (or insert a mark-sense card), and some magic rocket-surgery happens and you get instant results. How do you know the machine has not been programmed with a final outcome right from the onset?
The various scandals involving voting machines in the US* have persuaded the Directeur Général des Élections to stop the electronic voting madness for this election.
* The latest was when a company inadvertently disclosed the inner workings of the programs, it was found that it violated guidelines as the program that actually did the work was not only not the one the machine was approved for, but could have been easily planted from outside — a little bit like a computer virus (not strictly, here "virus" is an analogy).

I was an “aide PRIMO” on election day (the guy who says hello to voters and sends them to their proper poll), but I have worked all positions in all levels of elections, so I know a bit the mechanics.

First of all, many election workers are the most wretched dregs humanity can conjure; the first time I was working poll clerk, it was for a deputy returning officer who was illiterate. She just could not count, which happens to be handy when you are responsible for counting votes. Those people are usually what we call in french “B.S.”: people on welfare because they are utterly incapable of getting a job (any job) and doing it.

In the voting center I was working, we consistently had trouble with one poll throughout the day. While any other poll had at most 3 people waiting, this one seldom had less than 10 people waiting. The replacement poll clerk was late (but that’s understandable as the intended clerk did not show up). The first thing he said was “boys are you guys disorganized” (not entirely untrue, but given his subsequent performance, totally off the bat). He would routinely disappear to phone, even when some electors were there (both a no-no and a gross blatant violation of the law). He would then fail to fill the proper paperwork required throughout the day, and always displayed some attitude.

Despite our repeated calls to have him replaced, we had to endure with him as no replacement was ever given to us.

Then the polls closed, the first ballots that had to be counted were the city mayor ballots; this should not have taken more than 40-45 minutes. Well, 2 hours later, that poll still had not given that result. Naturally, we all congregated around them to see what was wrong and started to get some more attitude from the clerk who had driven the DRO (which was another illiterate dreg) to tears.

We had to call the cops to have the clerk forcibly removed from the premises; I hope the charges for disorderly conduct will stick…

That day, I had started work at 7:30 in the morning, picking up the ballot boxes along with the primo. When we got back to the district office, it was well beyond midnight, and we were not out of here before one thirty in the morning.