Two years ago: The Death of the PCAA from Groundlevel

I was working in a polling station in the riding of Calgary Elbow. Gordon Dirks was the incumbent, and Greg Clark was certainly on the verge of unseating him. Perhaps that's why the PCs had so many volunteer scrutinizers at the station that day - I feel about six or so would be right.

The first sign something was up was when a young scrutineer, younger than me, walked swiftly out of the polling station, crying. Her emotion was plain, seen from across the room. As she left and cried past me, I saw on her phone an email with PCAA marks all over it. One doesn't get any news of the world in these stations, but I took that woman as a sign something was happening outside.

The older scrutineers stayed strong until the end. Maybe they didn't have smartphones. Regardless, when it came time for the ballots to be counted, my partner and I, being new, separated all the ballots into separate piles and decided to make our count of the votes by size, by smallest to largest, with Greg Clark's pile looking conspicuously bigger than the rest.

Being slow, my partner and I, soon the scrutineers had all assembled around our table. They were relieved that Larry Heather got no votes; they gave sighs of relief as the Liberal and NDP candidates were swiftly counted. There were even little cheers.

Then we made it to the second biggest pile: Gordon Dirks of the PCAA. We counted the ballots in sets of 50; every time we got through another set the PC volunteers cheered. Just counting one put them ahead of every other party. By the time we had finished with the PC ballots, the volunteers seemed totally sure that at least here, in our little corner of Calgary-Elbow, the incumbent had won.

There remained the biggest pile to count, however. Again, we counted the votes in batches of 50 - and every time we did so - I will never forget this one older woman asking us, "and that's all, right?" No, not hardly; as she could plainly see, there were still hundreds of other votes to be tallied. We kept counting, and the worry on their faces grew, and every time, they wanted to believe that we had finished counting, only to be disappointed, again.

Ultimately, and to the surprise solely of the PC volunteers crowding around us, Greg Clark won our polling booth. The volunteers departed, disappointed, as my partner and I filed the paperwork.

Finally, we had our chance to walk outside, to news of an NDP majority.