Old or new, you can count on election problems

By LEN WELLS, Courier & Press correspondent
February 22, 2004

When the March 16 primary election rolls around, voters in many Southern Illinois counties will be in for a big surprise.

Instead of picking up a pointy stylus and punching their way through page after page of political choices, voters will be given a simple paper ballot and a pencil and will be asked to mark an "X" in the box next to the candidate of their choice.

Gone will be any chance of hanging chads, pregnant dimples and extraneous materials clogging up the counting machines. Voters will, however, be able to reminisce about the old days when colorful bedsheet-sized ballots contained all of their political choices - long before punch card ballots were invented.

Under the new voting system, which came about because of the 2000 Florida election fiasco, ballots will be counted electronically with what is described as an "optical scanning device."

Instead of election workers hunkering over stacks and stacks of paper ballots, counting votes into the wee hours of the morning, each ballot will be sent through a high-speed counting device with nearly instant results. Voters will actually send their own ballot through the machine, and know instantly that their vote has been counted.

Whenever new technology comes along, there can always be a downside. While paper ballots are pretty cheap to produce, those fancy counting machines cost thousands.

A lot of counties simply couldn't afford a counting machine for each and every precinct. The result has been the consolidation of many polling places. While the number of townships hasn't changed, the locations where people cast their votes have.

Wayne County Clerk Donna Endsley has spent the past several months trying to educate the voters about the new technology and where those new polling place are located.

With her fancy computerized counting machine under her arm, Donna has taken her paper ballot, optical scan, voting show on the road to every Ruritan, Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis club across the county and has received generally favorable acceptance.

What remains to be seen is what happens at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, March 16. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear about some folks showing up at the same polling place they've voted at since Harry Truman, waiting for the doors to open.

I can personally guarantee that slapping a "closed" sign on the front door of the polling places that are no longer in operation will not do the trick.

Not long ago, I witnessed a woman show up at the west door of the Wayne County Courthouse to pay her taxes. This was obviously the same door she has entered to pay her taxes since Harry Truman was in office. The problem was, the door was broke, had a big "Go around to another door" sign on it, plus streams of yellow "Police Line Do Not Cross" tape across the steps leading up to the door.

What did she do? She simply crawled under the police tape, and started banging on the busted door until someone came around to personally lead her to a door that worked. Some of this same behavior can be expected next month.

My advice? Have volunteer election workers stationed at the closed polls to lead these folks to one that is open.

Good luck with that.