Data Entry....Anybody wanna try it?

OK, OK, so it's not exactly my idea of fun, but good data is certainly the key to winning elections.

Our prize for collecting absentee ballot information from all 29 towns in Kennebec County is that we get to enter that data.

Most Mainers enjoy the fellowship of voting at the polls on Election day, talking politics with their neighbors, and giving folks gathering signatures for petitions a hard time. In recent years, however, more and more of our citizens are voting early...easy to do here. In the last presidential election, for example, many of our towns had upwards of a quarter of their votes cast before Election Day.

Some of this information is in electronic form, so not difficult to deal with at all. Most of our towns, however, are small, and have kept their absentee information on paper log sheets, written out in longhand by busy, tired town clerks.

Is that Clark or Clare? Are there really no Democrats in that town who voted absentee?

In time, with lots of help, it all gets deciphered and entered. Like all tasks, may hands make light work.