Let's talk about our state's elections, and what our election day/day after has been like.
From 5 am to 9 pm, I was at an elementary school just outside Ferguson, running constantly back and forth between the touch-screens and the paper ballot stations. My "lunch break" consisted of eating a sandwich two bites at a time, until another voter showed up. When I started voters on the touch-screens, I'd ask if they had used them before. A number of them told me they hadn't voted since 2008. The voters, as a rough guess, were >90% black. A majority of voters opted for the optical scan ballot, though. Several of them voted for more than one option in the same contest. One man voted for three presidents, and picked multiples in other races, as well. Some, when receiving a paper ballot, asked where the Democratic candidates were, or which side was the Democratic side. The heaviest turn-out was between 6 and 9 am, but was fairly slow at lunch time. I expected a rush after about 4 or 5 o'clock, but didn't see one. Then again, we more than doubled our optical-scan voting stations in the mid-morning, so it may have been that we just moved them through a lot faster. I figured we'd have a long, long line to process, at 7 pm (closing time), but we only had 3 people. Unfortunately, we had technical difficulties in closing down the touch-screen machines, forcing us to stay an extra hour. It didn't help that a poll worker unplugged the last touch-screen we were trying to sort out.
So we got out at 9. I got six White Castles, and some fries, and went home. I tried going to sleep around 11.30, but every time I closed my eyes, a voter was coming at me with a ballot. It was horrifying. I got up, and read glorious election results, and APS, until about 2 am.
At 7.30, I woke up to a conceded, defeated Hillary.
Also, it's been excessively warm, this fall, but today has been clear, with a high of about 60 degrees. The first day I get to wear a long-sleeved shirt is always a special day for me. Having scheduled a vacation day, I immediately set off on a tour of left-wing coffee shops, to enjoy the hippie tears. My wife got off work at 1 pm, and we walked around Whole Foods, hoping to see some sadness. The lefties aren't being too public about their angst, though. [kicks rocks]
The Missouri GOP made a pretty clean sweep of statewide offices, and finally reversed the shame of having a democratic governor. (The let-Ferguson-burn governor, at that.) We also took the lieutenant governor, sec-state, and attorney general; with double-digit leads in those three races.
Governor-elect Greitens is kind of a Trump story, having been (according to some) a Democrat, with no real political experience. In his political ads, he fired ARs and blew stuff up. He was accused of money-laundering, and wanting to "blow up government." The race was 51.5% - 45%, despite the Democrat (Koster) being endorsed by the NRA. I don't know a lot about the other candidates, except that our new attorney general was on the legal team that successfully defended Hobby Lobby against Obamacare.
http://graphics.stltoday.com/apps/elections/#missouri
