“It is hard enough to get the results of an election we all you have to do is collect results from the Counties Auditors all using an unified and electronic/automated system.
Now try doing it while collecting results from thousands of precincts (many run by little old grandma), all paper, all hand counted. Precincts to County Party to State Party.”
I’m sorry. Maybe I was a bit too harsh. While the counting of votes and passing them up the line seems pretty easy, I would guess that having not done a caucus before, dealing with congressional district lines and who’s vote counts where could be a bitch.
Presumably that’s why the GOP State Chairman is pretty sure McCain won, and why we have “87% Reporting” while not having any breakdown by county.
I have not spoken to the State Party in a few hours, but last I heard they were still waiting on a couple counties to report.
I would be surprised if King County finished tonight, 2600 precincts to report and consolidate.
My County took a 2 1/2 hours to finish and we only have 92 precincts, 91 of which meet in a pooled format. We had to hand count 300 delegate “ballots” and cross check them against “elected delegates” (alternates do not count) and delegate allocation per precinct. Of course phone calls had to be made to PCOs or Attendees (not all precincts have a PCO to run things, so an attendee had to figure this out and do it right) to correct forms.
We have always caucused, but never counted Delegate Presidential Preferences before.
The system is bad, the Party volunteers do their best.