Congratulations to your guy Harmon. He ran a good campaign and I am looking forward to what he will add to the Commission mix. Collins was one of the most developer-friendly members, and Harmon has promised to fight sprawl. It probably won't be hard to distinguish between the two Commissioners Harmon when the new terms start.

To what do you attribute the difference between Harmon's result and Amy's, besides the new machines, which undeniably made it more difficult to write-in? (My parents, who are in their 80s, found the new voting machines very difficult to cope with, and both "lost" their votes yesterday. I have to think that Amy and any other write-in lost some votes because of unfamiliarity with these machines).

- One Hart Intercivic employee being delivered by Sheriff's deputy to deal with a misconfigured eSlate machine.

I'm not sure if your speaking of the Cedar Bluff poll where I worked, But this happened there as well.

A few things I overheard yesterday while in line to vote:

Woman speaking to friend who just filed a change of address: "Why'd you say you live on *** St., you don't live there?
Friend: "Well, they don't know that"

Woman looking at sample ballot: "Governor? Are we voting for Governor? Who is our governor, anyway?"
Her friend: "I think it's Frist"

Man asking poll worker: "This sample ballot seems to have only Democrat primary candidates on it, is there another with Republicans?"
Poll worker: "I have NO idea".

One frantic poll worker to another: "Can't we get two people giving out access codes? This line is way too long."
Other poll worker, along with several waiting voters: "Huh?" (There were no empty voting machines, and no one was complaining about the wait anyway)

Turns out she was frantic because her line was six times longer than anyone elses. Why? Because she had the beginning of the alphabet, and the tiny signs over the heads of the four workers verifying and collecting signatures could not be seen until you were directly in front of the table. Most thought it was one line until they got close, and although several people commented that the reason they stood in the wrong line was the small, difficult to read signs, no one did anything to fix it.

The worst thing about the whole day is that I couldn't remember the last time a candidate I voted for actually won.