There was a bit of trouble across Illinois polls today, as some of the paper ballots in about 25 different counties, according to the Chicago Tribune, had been cut too wide to fit into the Diebold AccuVote precinct-based op-scanners.
Officials spent the day in panic, reprinting ballots with on-demand ballot printing systems, where available, and otherwise finding paper cutters to trim about one-eighth of an inch off the edge off the ballots that were said to have been cut incorrectly by two different printing companies.
The Washington Post reported the problems as “widespread” earlier today, but by mid-afternoon, officials were downplaying concerns, saying that they’d been able to get out new ballots to affected locations.
Most ballots that could not be trimmed will reportedly be hand-counted in the presence of officials from both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Some ballot, however, will be “remade”, incredibly enough, according to the Tribune, “under the supervision of representatives of each party.” That means that some human being will actually copy votes from one ballot, by hand, onto another, so they can then run the “remade” ballot through an optical-scanner. (Never mind how much more time that takes — and how votes can be changed in the process — than simply counting those ballots by hand in the first place.)…
When the problem emerged earlier this morning, according to this Rightwing website, which seems to have been among the first to report the problem today (though it appears they may have overstated the problem as occurring in 65, rather than 25 counties), some county clerks were instructing precincts to have voters use the 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems that most Illinois precincts have on hand for optional use by disabled voters.
If reported results are delayed tonight (polls close at 7pm CT, even as we write this), delays due to the need to unexpectedly hand-count paper ballots could be why.
Had they simply hand-counted paper ballots, at each precinct, at the close of polls, in front of all parties, video-cameras and anyone from the public who wished to watch, and posted the results at the polling place before moving ballots anywhere, today’s ballot nightmare could have been avoided. Questions about the accuracy of secret, unverified ballot tabulation by computer systems could have been avoided as well.
But, ya know, give ’em an eighth of an inch, and they’ll take a paper cutter, a mile and millions of unnecessary tax-payer dollars to do the job our eyeballs could have done better, more efficiently, and much more transparently.
UPDATE: We asked Melisa Urda, Co-Chair of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project, a non-partisan election integrity watchdog group, for comment on today’s ballot mess. She responded with several thoughts via email tonight. Here are the main ones for now…
1. This failure invalidates the Logic and Accuracy tests conducted prior to the election not just in DuPage County but across the state. Why wasn’t this failure caught by testing the same type of ballots which were to be used on Election Day? A re-evaluation of the validity of pre-election tests and election day problems at minimum is in order.
2. In some precincts in DuPage, where optical scan machines would not count the mis-sized ballots, many voters used the Diebold touchscreen machines instead–the same machines that were hacked by Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in September of 2011.
3. According to an election judge at the Longwood School in Naperville (Poll ID 300) the problems occurred as early as 6am when the election commenced, and were ongoing until 4pm when the correctly sized ballots were finally delivered. The vote choices on the mis-sized ballots were then marked on the new ballots and fed into the optical scan machines.
The first point raised seems the most immediate. “Logic and Accuracy tests” are supposed to be done prior to elections with stacks of test ballots to make sure each machine is working as it is supposed to. But, it seems, nobody did the L&A tests with the actual ballots that were printed by the printers this year? Or, if so, somehow the problem escaped notice in all 25 counties where the L&A tests were supposedly run? One of those two points seems to be true. Neither is particularly encouraging.
We are very lucky this happened during a GOP primary, as opposed to the general election on November 6th. All hell would have broken loose across the state — and perhaps even the country.
And once again, Brad, this vital assessment of the track conditions was ignored by the MSM in their bland coverage of the horse-race results.
I admit freely that I don’t know nutin about nutin when it comes to hacking or the nuts and bolts about fixing an election electronically except what I read here and a couple of other sites but, BUT, when I hear that ballots are going to be “remade” (complicated) instead of just counted (simple) I know the fix is in.
When I saw an explanation of the Illinois ballot last night and then heard that they were having to be cut and ‘handled’ extensively, I just started laughing; more of the same-old. Learning now that the ballot problems drove people to Diebold machines? Well, that’s just icing on the cake isn’t it? LOL.
It should though be apparent to anyone watching what has happened in the Republican caucus’ that the fix is in for Mitt. This Illinois primary has no more integrity than the Missouri caucus.
Great show/vid Brad, here’s hoping you become a YouTube superstar 🙂
Can’t help but envision the scene of these election workers running around trying to fit too-big ballots into the machines and cutting them up in fast-motion with that Benny Hill music playing, right? Would be hilarious were it not so tragic.
“Re-Making” a ballot is a process already applied in elections. I worked at a polling place in Wisconsin in 2008. When a person filles out their ballot and accidentally fills out more than one person for an elected office the ballot is kicked out and the person must fix the problem before the ballot is accepted.
I worked in the Absentee ballot area. Our job was to take the absentee ballots and run them through the op-scan machines (we could have hand counted them). If the machine kicked a ballot out because of a double vote, we had to “re-make” the ballot to the best of our ability.
If for instance they said vote straight Republican ticket but then filled in some republicans and some democrats for some of the races, when we “remade” the ballot we only checked off those areas where they had made the extra effort to vote for a person and did not fill out anything associated with the party, even if that meant leaving much of the ballot empty.
Besides beig hackable machines can not infer what you mean when you do stuff like this.
Great news Brad: Record LOW turnout at least in Chicago. The damn weather was just absolutely perfect – mild breeze, 82 deg, sunny.
I suspect some bastard Republitards crossed over and voted Democratic: the 34th District State Senate Democratic nominee is now a former douchebag TV news guy instead of the former head of the County Dem. Party. WTVO news presenter Steve Stadelman won by 2:1 over two respected opponents Democrats Marla Wilson and Dan Lewandowski!
What is next, etch a sketch ballots?
This “mistake” seems like a golden OPPORTUNITY for altering votes and stuffing the ballot box (through extra on-demand printing of ballots on election day). We should consider the possibility that this was a deliberate manipulation, though human error is also possible.