The Election

I entered the large teared judicial room and realized that no seats were available.  I was told I would need to pay for a seat, the equivalent of just over $8.00 dollars.  I wryly thought about the irony of judicial systems everywhere and pulled out some money.  The paper money consisted of an ornately patterned roll of special paper that had many perforations in rows.  I would pull off little rectangless of the money to pay and one full strip of perforations off the side was called one 'wall.'

I was directed to one man of many black suited men sitting in a chair near the aisle.  Apparently he had the job of taking up the chair until someone paid him to leave.  I pulled off some money sections for him and proceeded towards the chair.

Later I found myself in a large room with long tables and seated individuals.  We were doing the counts for an election.  In front of me, a small man was seated, between us was a long table with some papers on it, and I stood in front of the table with one other person, a tall man.  People would come to us one by one and cast their vote.  Around us, other individuals were seated at other places amongst the tables doing the same thing but presumedly for other candidates.  The casting was done with some kind of ritual that involved rapping a wooden gavel on the table.  Voters would come to us one by one and me and the man seated across the table from me would do the quick ritual for each of them to cast the vote.  At one point, I was surprised that the gavel flipped off the table onto the floor and I had to pick it up and give it back to the seated man. 

Eventually there was a lull and I discussed with the tall man standing with me the counts and if we were done.  I was not sure of the actual counts, apparently that was not part of my job, and was not sure if we were done.  But he checked his paperwork and said it was 888, not sure if that was the expected or the actual count but had the impression the two numbers were expected to be very close to each other.  We briefly discussed past election gigs and counts we had done.  Now that the expected number for this one had been reached and no further voters were coming to us, we could say our work was done, even though around us, others were still seated.

At that point, a female official came up to us and told me that she had to investigate any 'irregularities.'  I said with surprise, "You mean the gavel falling on the floor?" and she said yes. but assured me that it was a minor thing and probably not a big deal, just that her job involved involved investigating even the tiniest issues to be on the safe side and insure accuracy.   I felt reassured and then the dream ended.