In its biggest test yet, new error-detecting voting equipment in Cook County won a passing grade from many voters Tuesday, but there were some complaints, glitches and confusion.
About 100 malfunctioning machines were reported to Chicago election officials, a small fraction of the 2,705 machines deployed, one in each precinct, to scan for possible ballot errors and keep a running vote count. Twenty of the machines had to be replaced, officials said.
Some machines rejected ballots even after election officials pushed an “override” button designed to accept ballots as-is. In other cases voters complained that ill-trained election judges prevented them from making sure their votes counted.
But overall, said Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, “I think it’s going remarkably smoothly. Is it perfect? No.”
Despite an all-day drizzle, turnout was in line with recent patterns–53 percent of registered voters cast ballots in Chicago and 51 percent in suburban Cook County. DuPage County expected to surpass 60 percent.
In a court-ordered response to the 2000 election, when large numbers of ballots failed to register votes, suburban Cook and Chicago voters for the first time in a general election fed their ballots into PBC 2100 ballot counters instead of handing them to an election judge.
The counters alert voters to defects such as multiple votes for one contest and also undervotes, in which no votes register in a contested race. Undervotes can be caused by intentionally skipping a race or by unintentionally failing to cleanly punch out a bit of paper denoting a candidate.
At polling places across the city, voters gave the new system mixed reviews.
“You can’t mess it up. It all lines up, and the machines double-check it for you,” said Laurie Viets, 30, as she stepped out of a 44th Ward polling place in Chicago.
But in the city’s 14th Ward, election judge Geraldine Michalowicz said the machines had given judges trouble all morning. Time and again, the machine failed to respond when voters asked judges to override error messages to submit the ballots.
An 89-year-old woman, who did not want to be identified, was frustrated after her ballot would not go through, and election judges told her she needed to revote.
“Oh please, you mean I have to go through all that again?” the woman moaned. “My leg has almost given out already.”
The woman painstakingly filled out the ballot again, but the ballot counter again refused to override the error message. She sat down in anguish as a volunteer offered her a sweet roll.
“I don’t want a sweet roll,” she said. “I want my ballot to go in.”
The woman reinserted the ballot twice more before it was accepted.
At Senn High School in the city’s 48th Ward, a number of voters were annoyed when one machine briefly refused ballots.
Deborah Paskind, 48, inserted her ballot six times before it was accepted.
At a bank lobby polling place in the 22nd Precinct of the Southwest Side’s 13th Ward–House Speaker Michael Madigan territory–election judges inadvertently did just about everything to negate the fail-safe system.
Instead of having voters insert their completed ballots into the machine, election judges were doing it for them.
When the machine rejected ballots and displayed messages intended to alert voters of potential errors, the election judges simply hit the override button. Judges are supposed to ask voters whether they want to go back to try casting their votes again.
More Top Picks Batterie
“It’s like you hit the override button every time,” said election judge Bob Houghton, 43, a laborer for the City of Chicago, after whisking away another voter’s ballot.
He said he had no idea why the machines were programmed to alert voters of undervotes–a feature intended to inform voters of possible errors.
“To me, I don’t understand it,” he said. “I don’t know why they would have it, but they do.”
In the Rogers Park neighborhood, voter Craig Conover, 51, said he was stunned by clueless election judges.
When the machine in the 27th Precinct of the 49th Ward spat out his ballot and told him of an undervote, he said the election judge didn’t know what to do. She tried, without success, to get help from other judges.
Twice, Conover said, he reached for the ballot, since he was aware that he had the right to revote. He said he was told: “No! No! Don’t touch it!”
Suddenly, the judge pressed the override button and the ballot disappeared into the machine. Now it was in a sealed box and impossible to change.
“The machine worked fine. It was the human element that was lacking,” Conover said.