Federal election officials reportedly spent Tuesday reviewing what they described as “several inconsistencies and anomalies” surrounding the Los Angeles mayoral primary, stopping just short of saying they had any idea what was actually going on.
According to sources familiar with the review, investigators were puzzled by several statistical oddities that appeared during the tabulation process.
FEC investigator Joseph Barron addressed reporters outside a government office carrying three binders, two calculators, and what appeared to be a gallon-sized coffee mug.
“We’re looking at everything,” Barron said. “Whenever numbers don’t line up the way people expect, we investigate. Sometimes it’s a reporting delay. Sometimes it’s a spreadsheet issue. Sometimes somebody accidentally enters a precinct twice because they were distracted by office birthday cake.”
Barron cautioned everyone against jumping to conclusions.
“I’ve worked investigations where the biggest scandal turned out to be someone sorting counties alphabetically instead of numerically.”
Still, Washington being Washington, that advice lasted approximately eleven seconds.
Cable news panels immediately divided into two camps: one declaring democracy had collapsed, the other insisting anyone asking questions hated democracy itself.
Meanwhile, the people with the most interesting observations weren’t politicians.
They were just trying to make a living.
Gary, a forklift operator at a paper warehouse that supplies government offices, said he accidentally overheard election consultants while delivering pallets of copier paper.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Gary insisted. “They were standing right beside Dock Three arguing about whether twelve different versions of the word ‘final’ should appear in the filename.”
“They settled on ‘FINAL_Final_UseThisOne_Really_Final2.'”
Across town, Linda, who drives a city bus, unknowingly transported three campaign staffers after election night.
“They climbed aboard looking exhausted,” she recalled.
“One guy spent the whole ride saying, ‘Did anyone remember to hit refresh?’ Another kept asking whether unofficial results were official enough to panic about.”
“They all got off three stops early because they weren’t paying attention.”
Then there was Oscar, a vending machine repairman working inside a downtown office building.
“I fixed a machine that wouldn’t release a honey bun,” Oscar said. “While I had the front panel open, two consultants walked by arguing over percentages.”
“I don’t know what race they were talking about, but one of them said, ‘If we stare at this spreadsheet any longer, it’s going to start lying to us out of self-defense.'”
The most colorful account came from Martha, who has cleaned office windows around Los Angeles for nearly thirty years.
“When you’re hanging outside the twentieth floor,” she explained, “people forget the glass works both ways.”
She claims one conference room spent forty-five minutes debating whether a missing box on a report represented a software bug, a printer problem, or “Steve forgetting to scroll down.”
“It turned out to be Steve.”
Back in Washington, Barron sighed as reporters demanded dramatic answers.
“Everybody wants a conspiracy,” he said. “Sometimes government is just a collection of overworked people emailing the wrong PDF to the wrong person while somebody from IT says, ‘Have you tried turning it off and back on?'”
As the cameras packed up, Earl, the food truck operator parked outside the federal building, summed up the day.
“I sold sixty-three cheeseburgers to people investigating paperwork,” he said. “If they argued half as much over ketchup as they do over spreadsheets, we’d still be here next Tuesday.”
God Bless America.
