If you're planning an election returns party in Knox County tonight, you'd better pick up an extra keg or two and plan for an all-nighter. First of all, the polls are open until 8PM. Second of all, there may be lots of paper ballots to hand count.

The KNS spoke with Administrator of Elections Greg Mackay, who said elections are going smoothly, but they are prepared for a long night, and even possibly days of counting paper write-in ballots.

He would not commit to when results would be available because he doesn't yet know how many paper ballots they will have to count, but said they have 10 days to certify the election and they will meet that deadline.

Mackay describes how the counting process will work, and says that he is prepared to stop it at 2AM if it is still going because by then he would have been there for 19 hours straight and that's when you start making mistakes.

(Ed. note: if early voting patterns and Rikki's analysis of past primary elections hold true, there could be between 4500 and 7500 paper ballots to be counted by hand. Let's say there are 4500. Greg says they will have up to 15 counting teams. That's 300 ballots per team. As Greg described the process, I'm guessing two minutes per ballot. That's 600 minutes, or 10 hours. If they stop at 2AM and start up again in the morning, you aren't likely to see the final results until around noon tomorrow.)

It sounds like it will be a long night for Greg Mackay and the rest of the Knox County Election workers, and for political junkies waiting for their next fix of news in one of the most controversial elections in Knox County history.

And the fun part is that this election will just be getting started once all the votes are counted. The final outcome will likely be decided in court.