Cook Co. switching to optical scan ballots

May 26, 2005

BY MAURA KELLY LANNAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cook County voters will be using optical scan equipment in future elections and doing away with the old-style punch cards ballots, the voting method blamed for Florida's 2000 election nightmare, the county clerk announced Thursday.

Statewide, absentee voters could also see changes soon in the deadline by which their ballots must reach election officials.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is reviewing legislation passed by the Senate last week that would let election authorities count absentee ballots that arrive up to 14 days after Election Day if they are postmarked before the election. Currently, only ballots from overseas and military voters benefit from the 14-day grace period.

"There's always people that mail their ballots in before Election Day but they don't arrive on Election Day so they can't be counted, so those people basically lose their right to vote," said Cook County Clerk David Orr, who initiated the legislation.

More than 1,540 absentee ballots in suburban Cook County were not counted because they arriving late for November's presidential election, he said.

If Blagojevich signs the legislation, it would take effect by next March.

In suburban Cook County, voters should also be using either touch-screen machines or optical scanners in the March gubernatorial primary, Orr said.

With optical scanners, the voter fills in an oval next to the candidate's name with a pencil or pen and then puts it through a scanner. If the form isn't filled out correctly, the scanner returns it to the voter.

The county will also buy at least one touch-screen machine for every 2,402 precincts, primarily to help physically disabled and blind voters cast ballots independently, Orr said. Those machines also alert voters to possible errors and allow them to correct mistakes before casting ballots.

Illinois law requires that the touch-screen machines have paper audit trails, which allow voters to verify their votes and can be used for recounts.

The city of Chicago, which has its own election authority, is also doing away with punch card ballots and expects to choose a company for its new voting equipment within the next few weeks, Chicago Board of Election Commissioners spokesman Tom Leach said.

Orr plans to recommend that the county use federal grants allocated by the Help America Vote Act, which helps states pay for equipment upgrades, to buy the dual system from Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems for about $23.8 million.