Pressure is mounting on the Park Election Office to declare a winner in the 2014 POPS election before the official date of hibernation.
“No one envies me right now,” says Gerritt Wezel, as he scoots off to work well before dawn today. The head of the Park Election Office is feeling the heat, so to speak, even in the face of temperatures that are below the freezing mark.
This is the fourth day that Wezel has had to face the press outside his den and the fifth day since the election was held. Still, he has no results to relay and he says he has given up on making promises.
“It is what it is and it will be what it will be,” he says, almost shyly, as he makes his way to the scene of counting, sorting, and re-counting the hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast last Thursday.
As the official hibernation date of November 17 draws ever closer, pressure is mounting on the Park Election Office and its head to declare the winner of the 2014 POPS election. But Wezel says that cannot be done in a hurry.
“Animals want to be secure in the knowledge that the winner we declare is the actual winner…the Animal who won the most votes,” he said in a radio interview over the weekend.
“And with the Animalpower we have, that is going to take time. But I can assure you that when we do announce the winner, it will be after a meticulous count and re-count and there will be no question as to the accuracy [of the count] and who the winner really is,” he said.
