2006 Illinois Primaries - Democracy is HARD!
I'm still recovering from a long, slow day as an election judge for Tuesday's primary election. I got there around 5 am, and didn't leave until after 8:30 pm. The polls were open from 6 am until 7 pm. We had a very low turnout, with 163 voters out of approximately 550 registered in our precinct (almost 30%). The last election I worked was the 2004 presidential race, where we had over an 85% turnout!

This election was different for two reasons. First, as an "upgrade" from the punch ballots of past elections (with the potential for hanging chads like in Florida), they introduced two new voting options this year. The voter could request a paper ballot, and receive an ~24 inch long sheet with questions on both sides where they had to make an X inside a circle for the optical scanner. The other option was a touch screen system, sort of like an ATM. The paper worked pretty well in our precinct, and we were glad we had that available because the electronic system wasn't usable until ~9:30 am! It turns out the card activator system, which is required for anyone to vote on the touch screen (it identifies the precinct and which party's primary they're voting in), was incorrectly assembled before shipping to all the precincts! Someone put the paper roll (like a cash register receipt, but we use it for a morning zero report and the official tallies at the end of the day) in backwords! We couldn't locate a key we were supposed to have to open the printer compartment, so had to wait for our computer technician (actually, a New Trier High School junior who's in one of my daughter's classes!) to come fix it. The irony here was that someone who isn't eligible to vote yet was the key to helping the rest of us vote! Once that was fixed the rest of the day went pretty smoothly. It took forever to count ballots (used & unused) and prepare the tallies at the end of the day. That card activator was the key machine to consolidate the electronic results from memory cards in the optical scanner and the touch screen, then prepare a single final tally for our precinct. Even as tired as we all were, our results were transmitted electronically to the Cook County headquarters by 8 pm.

Chicago Tribune news : Elections Results
Even now, over 36 hours after the polls closed, we still don't have answers to several of the races. And this primary election had an incredibly low turn out. What would have happened if this was a contested presidential election?!?

The final irony is, in a democracy, anyone can win an election. In Cook County, the Board's president, John Stroger, suffered a massive stroke a week before the election. He's alive, but is expected to be severely impaired and hasn't left the hospital. Still, he beat his primary opponent by 52% to 48%! I guess the Cook County Democratic "bosses" plan to name his successor without having to worry about the approval by the citizenry. I wish Mr. Stroger a full recovery, but don't understand why he didn't withdraw from the race and let someone more physically able run for the November election (and probably serve, since this is a heavily Democratic county). I guess you've gotta love Chicago and its politics!!!
- posted by Larry H @ 9:25 AM