Part 16.3
Karyn Quinlan volunteered to count ballots in the hand recounting of the ballots in King County. She is a Green, but signed up through the Dems (big surprise!). She tells her story of the count here.
The best part is near the end though,
On this last day, I learned something that confounded my notion of what had been going on in the GOP Lounge. That morning I was surprised to see that the Sean Hannity look-alike had also been selected by his party for the final day. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been. After all, I knew he was a GOP party faithful. He was a precinct officer for his Eastside district and worked on the Rossi campaign. Seeing him for the first time in the nonpartisan break room that morning, I decided to seize the opportunity to ask, “How come I see you going in and out of the GOP Lounge at breaks and lunch?” It was a good question, since counters and observers were explicitly instructed not to talk to one another, and the observer rooms on both sides�Democrat and Republican�were supposedly off-limits to ballot counters. But I had personally witnessed several other ballot counters, Ben among them, disappearing inside the GOP Lounge, some even emerging with doughnuts and other tasty contraband. The answer the Sean Hannity look-alike gave me came as a shock.
It was for prayer time, he said barely above a whisper. I had to ask the other people standing with us�one other Democratic ballot counter and two Republican ballot counters�to confirm what he said. This was something I had never considered. That a political party interested in the results of an election would conduct daily prayers, formally or informally, inside an office building in which the express purpose is to conduct civic business left me speechless. Apparently, because they had paid for the space, they felt entitled to do whatever they wanted�or, more precisely, whatever they could get away with. The revelation that prayers were being conducted in the GOP Lounge, together with the fact that the Republican candidate for governor once said he thought creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools, gave me a chilling new understanding of the phrase “party faithful.” What I had thought was a contest for governor turned out to be more like a religious war.
What a twit.
