RUSH: This is Jim in central Iowa. You’re up first today. Great to have you with us. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: Mega dittos. Of course, I think nowadays we ought to almost call it giga dittos. Big, bigger, more. Hey, I’ve been listening to you this morning as I do many mornings. I just got off duty as a poll watcher in central Iowa and I just have to tell you that my feelings and your feelings are pretty close together.
RUSH: Let me ask you a question, Jim. Jim, what does a poll watcher watch?
CALLER: Well, our primary duty — other than making sure there’s no skullduggery going on that we can bring to the attention of officials that are there recording votes — is to take the list of voters that have passed through the lines and cast their ballots. We get a copy of that list, and we can check it off on our Republican side and see what has voted.
RUSH: Okay. So you can get an idea what the party turnout is.
CALLER: Yes, exactly.
RUSH: Because of the registration. Same thing in my polling place. I mean, they know… No, wait a second, now. Wait a second. Forget that. I may be totally naive. Does the registration that you have in front of you indicate somebody shows up and who they are? Does it say they’re Republican or Democrat?
CALLER: No, they don’t, but —
RUSH: Then how do you know Republicans…? How do you know that Republican turnout is up where you are?
CALLER: I go to my list provided to me by our county Republican people that are registered Republicans, and the state verifies it for us through the Republican Party, and we check against the list of Republican people that have voted. We say, “Oh, I’ve got that name. I can check it off. I don’t have that or that. Oh, I’ve got that one,” and here’s my tally from the first two hours of pretty good voting for this time in the morning. It’s seven in the morning. It’s kind of raining, dreary. It was, anyway. I had recorded on the second precinct 78 total voters coming through the line recording a vote. I found 32 of those 78 on that list were registered Republicans. I could verify that much. I don’t know how they voted, of course.
RUSH: That’s less than 50%.
CALLER: Well, a little bit less than 50%, but then if you sit and look at the person across from me who is doing the same thing I’m doing for the Democratic Party, they had a mere handful. I believe she said it was seven.
RUSH: Well, wait a minute. You got 78 people, 38 Republicans and seven Democrats. Who are the others?
CALLER: Thirty-two registered Republicans went through the line out of that 78.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And seven or eight Democrats were identified by her sitting across from me.
RUSH: Okay, that’s 45 people out of 78.
CALLER: Right, and you know what the rest are? Independents.
RUSH: Okay, and you don’t know how they’re voting.
CALLER: No. No, we certainly don’t. But if we’re doing our job right here in central Iowa, we’ve contacted them and we sent them information. We followed up on the absentee ballot list.
RUSH: Okay. So in his little corner of the world, it’s 38-7, Republicans over Democrats, the rest independents. Thanks for that.