Together they are studying, discussing and haggling over hundreds of absentee ballots at a painstaking, one-at-a-time pace.
A university can have only three players on the ballot at a time, a rule that will probably delay the enshrinement of several of Coach Nick Saban's Alabama stars a decade from now.
The evolution from counting paper ballots one at a time to counting as many as a thousand punch-card ballots a minute occupied about seventy years — a period that can be seen as having opened in 1892, when lever voting machines first appeared.
You're looking at ballots one at a time.
Extra chairs were brought in so that we all had seats to watch seven election officials sitting around the big conference table, counting ballots one at a time with meticulous care.
"The ballot initiative comes at a time when broader political calculations could be influencing the mayor's decision-making".
Dieulhomme Dumelice, a CEP observer, said angry voters were ripping ballots in half while others were stuffing as many as three ballots into the box at a time.
The proposal, which would require a constitutional amendment or ballot box action, comes at a time when the state's vaunted public university system is increasingly perceived as the most visible victim of huge budget cuts.
Although the governor agreed to put it on the ballot, the agreement came at a time when he was making a considerable show of wanting to rein in state debt, and he has openly voiced reservations about the act and has said he is not sure whether he would support its passage.
Organization of American States monitors said there had been tampering with ballots, but most important, it said that the disappearance of ballots and tally sheets for hours at a time when votes were supposedly being counted made it impossible to verify the results.
There was no secret ballot; votes were heard one at a time and recorded in the minutes.
