Surely This Can't Be Right

[billroper]

In the category of "Surely This Can't Be Right", here's what happened at my polling place today in my ward in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. As I recall, this is what happened last time and someone said that was wrong and the election workers would be retrained. Not so much, it seems.

I handed over my driver's license so they could scan it, this being the easiest way to look up my voter registration. They flipped the screen over and I signed it as best as I could with the stylus. The election worker there passed the signature, printed out a slip of paper, and I moved onto the next station where I was handed two enormous paper ballots and a "privacy shield".

Off to the voting booth I went, where I filled in all of the ovals, including those on the second sheet, which was entirely for our "judicial retention ballot" about which the less said, the better. (Ok, I didn't fill in *all* the ovals. I skipped all the uncontested races.)

So far, so good. Up to the scanner to submit my ballots, using the privacy shield to cover the little marked ovals. And *then*, the election worker needed to slide the privacy shield out of the way so that he could *initial* each ballot in the corner, giving him an easy glance at the most important races. If the ballots had gone into the scanner without being initialed, they wouldn't have been counted in any recount.

This leaves the questions of "What good is the privacy shield?" and "Shouldn't the ballots have been initialed when they were handed to me so that my ballot would actually remain secret?"

Now, I don't really think the election worker *cared* about checking my ballot choices. It *is*, however, the principal of the thing. (I would say that I did briefly check for snipers on my way to the car afterwards, but that would be exaggerating. A lot.)

Seriously, this is *not* the way this is supposed to work.

Comments

Agreed, not the way it's supposed to work

[xap]

wow. I know it doesn't directly compare, since counties do a lot of the handling & I only ever voted in-person in Lake County IL never Cook. But for me the initialing was always part of the ballot-providing portion of things. They didn't usually offer the privacy shield or marker until AFTER the initials were in place. And then there was usually mention of which direction to put the ballot in the shield, so that the initials would be visible without moving that when I was done. Finally, at the end I was always asked to _show_ the worker the initials (in the strip above the shield) and then do the feed myself (or with assistance when machines were cranky, but still with shield in place).

[ribirdnerd]

That's strange, the poll workers do not have to initial our ballots here in Rhode Island.