St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1886-11-07
Beauties of the Present Election Law
When it Comes to Counting
the Ballots.
Some of the Incidents That Make Life
Burden to Reporters at
Election lime.
Making a Table of the Returns
and Some of Its luminous
Features.

they DO III ne mind OF the candidate dur
ing election week. Those people who fancy
that the large tables which appear N the
morning papers, showing the vote on some
one hundred or more candidates in forty or
fifty voting prec nets, are brought to the
newspaper offices all ready to be published
to the world, do not know that half score
or more newspaper men have been making
themselves prematurely bald and running
their sunny dispositions in preparing them.
The present law in the state of Minnesota
which governs the counting of ballots. has
been the subject of more deliberate. heavy
weight swearing among newspaper men
the past week than anything that has oc
Cured since the ST. Cloud cyclone. Added
to the slow processes required by the law
is that delectabe system of dividing up the
city of ST. Paul into election districts.
which makes it possible for man to get so
deeply tangled in the network of wards
election districts and alderInanic districts
that lie doesn't know whether he lives in the
Sixteenth ward of the Third election dis
trict of the Fourth aIdermanic precinct or
somewhere else. From the three facts that
the law requires each ballot to be read
through and each name checked. and that
in some places 500 split tickets may be cast
and that an allwse Providence has so or
dained the course Of affairs on this SHINING
world that man who has been checking
I'D voters all day can count but one vote in a
minute all night the returns are ready for the
reporters to copy in anywhere from five to
fifty hours after the polls are closed. This
is no fiction, but cold fact that some thirty
or forty able-bOdied men who took board
and lodging in the small rooms where the
judges were last Tuesday night. and waited
for the count, will willingly make affidavit
to. After judge of election has been
posted at 7X9 hole in the wall for ten
hours and alternately inquired the names
and addresses of free and enlightened citi-
zens who manifest all aimless desire to ex
ercise their rights of suffrage. and murmured
imprecatiOns on illegal voters. much of his
Unborn genius has been tried out Of him.
Besides this he has cold in his head. This
is not helpful in the matter of counting the
ballots.
In one of the precincts of this city the
judges and clerks began counting at pre-
cisely $50 o'clock p. III. There had been
about nine hundred votes cast. For two
hours they sorted ballots, picking out the
straights and splits and trying to make
combinations so that all the votes for reg
lister should come in one pile. That mixed
the vote for clerk SO badly that it was de-
cided to begin over again and put those for
clerk in pile regardless of the vote for
register. Then they came to the conclusion
that they were more liable to get mixed in
that way. so they shuff1ed them all together
and about 10 o'clock began the count.
At this point a candidate thumped on the
window and asked, Won't you just run up
the votes for me so that can get an esti-
mate of how Pm coming Out?"
Then one of the judges looked at his
watch and remarked: I'm deuced tired