In a room at the Chittenden County Courthouse on Main Street in Burlington, groups of four people are seated at seven tables. More tables are out in the hall. Three coffee pots are on. It looks like a bridge club tournament. Except there's a deputy standing in the corner.

Instead of playing cards, these foursomes are playing count-the-auditor-votes. It's a time-consuming game with lots of rules.

Two Republicans and two Democrats sat at each table. The Republicans were short three people because of last-minute illness and personal conflicts, rendering some groups useless. Two Democrats and one Republican does not a fair counting group make. County Republican Chairman Jon Hughes was working his phone fast and furious in search of replacements.

After county Clerk Diane Lavallee opened the first box of ballots about 9:30 a.m. today, the first foursome got the task of counting the ballots into bunches of 50. The next table's job was to double-check that count. Once the whole box was separated into bunches of 50, other tables finally got to stop chit-chatting and start counting.

One person read the auditor vote off the ballot while another watched. The other two marked which person received the vote - Progressive Martha Abbott, Democrat Tom Salmon, Republican Randy Brock, Liberty Unionist Jerry Levy, other, blank, spoiled, whatever. During the brief time I was watching, it looked like a bunch of voters opted out of the auditor race.

The crew assembled in Chittenden County has 62,000 ballots to count, 50 at a time. They and their counterparts in every county in the state will count about 250,000 ballots before they can declare who won the auditor's seat.

We'll have a look at how the count is going in Tuesday's paper.

- Terri Hallenbeck