At 11:15, I was the 220th person to vote in my heavily Democratic/Green Urbana precinct. The election judge said turnout is higher than usual. There’s no love for Blagojevich around these parts, though — I’ve seen many, many yards in C-U with signs for every Democrat under the sun except him.
I voted at about 7 or 7:15 am. Brief wait while they got the two people in front of me situated. Apparently, there were 2 options: computer or optical scan. They weren’t asking for your preference, though. Just handing out optical scan. I would have used OS anyway, so I didn’t say anything. No requests for photo ID. I had my mailing in hand from the Chicago Board of Elections, and they used that to track me down in the book. They gave me a pen a privacy slip, and ballot, and I did my voting. When I was done, I put my ballot in the slip and the election worker showed me how to feed the ballot into the scanner.
The only shadiness I saw were 2 people who weren’t sure where they were supposed to vote. The workers had them sign an affadavit and then let them vote. I assume that it was a provisional ballot. The workers also told them to get to a library or equivalent and update their registration right away so they could participate in the mayoral/aldermanic election in February.
I heard the judges saying that turnout was higher than they expected. The little scanner machine tabulated the total number of ballots, and it said mine was #44.
I had a choice of paper or touch screen. I went with the touch screen. The election judge had to program the plastic card. I think they get prompts about what kind of ballot it is (provisional, feds only, normal) and then they handed it to me and told me to stick the card into the machine and treat it like an ATM. Instructions on the machine were sparse but adequate (showed a picture of the card and the direction to insert it into machine–a corner of the card is angled for that purpose).
The touch screen was nice! Write-in was easy just select write-in which was present in all non-retention races, and a touch screen keyboard pops up to type out the name. At the end of the ballot, it puts all your choices on screen for you to check, then it prints them all out page by page so you can check it again and then you submit it. The print out is on thermal paper sealed in the machine.
I spent the weekend and this morning volunteering for the Duckworth campaign. The Republican robocalls are certainly having an impact. Probably 5-10% of the folks I was able to talk to mentioned a very high volume of annoying calls from the “Duckworth campaign”, to the point of harrassment. Probably 3 of the total said they were not going to vote for Tammy strictly because of the annoyance.
Oh, and, I’ll remind Archpundit’s readers that Tammy’s (and Dan Seal’s) campaign would have been a LOT more likely to succeed if the IL Dem party had a backbone and had redrawn the congressional maps to put more Dems in marginal districts like theirs. Unfortunately, our IL state reps really don’t give a damn about electing Democrats nationally.
We’re going to very, very lucky to see even 1 Democractic house pickup in Illinois.
Had no problems voting in Palatine. I chose the touch screen option, which was very easy to use. Good thing too, as I had my 6 month old daughter with me.
I voted early the other week. Is there ANY news on Duckworth yet? I don’t live in her district, but I’m anxious. Reading Mark’s comment was do disheartening.
November 7th, 2006 at
At 11:15, I was the 220th person to vote in my heavily Democratic/Green Urbana precinct. The election judge said turnout is higher than usual. There’s no love for Blagojevich around these parts, though — I’ve seen many, many yards in C-U with signs for every Democrat under the sun except him.
November 7th, 2006 at
I voted at about 7 or 7:15 am. Brief wait while they got the two people in front of me situated. Apparently, there were 2 options: computer or optical scan. They weren’t asking for your preference, though. Just handing out optical scan. I would have used OS anyway, so I didn’t say anything. No requests for photo ID. I had my mailing in hand from the Chicago Board of Elections, and they used that to track me down in the book. They gave me a pen a privacy slip, and ballot, and I did my voting. When I was done, I put my ballot in the slip and the election worker showed me how to feed the ballot into the scanner.
The only shadiness I saw were 2 people who weren’t sure where they were supposed to vote. The workers had them sign an affadavit and then let them vote. I assume that it was a provisional ballot. The workers also told them to get to a library or equivalent and update their registration right away so they could participate in the mayoral/aldermanic election in February.
I heard the judges saying that turnout was higher than they expected. The little scanner machine tabulated the total number of ballots, and it said mine was #44.
November 7th, 2006 at
I had a choice of paper or touch screen. I went with the touch screen. The election judge had to program the plastic card. I think they get prompts about what kind of ballot it is (provisional, feds only, normal) and then they handed it to me and told me to stick the card into the machine and treat it like an ATM. Instructions on the machine were sparse but adequate (showed a picture of the card and the direction to insert it into machine–a corner of the card is angled for that purpose).
The touch screen was nice! Write-in was easy just select write-in which was present in all non-retention races, and a touch screen keyboard pops up to type out the name. At the end of the ballot, it puts all your choices on screen for you to check, then it prints them all out page by page so you can check it again and then you submit it. The print out is on thermal paper sealed in the machine.
November 7th, 2006 at
I spent the weekend and this morning volunteering for the Duckworth campaign. The Republican robocalls are certainly having an impact. Probably 5-10% of the folks I was able to talk to mentioned a very high volume of annoying calls from the “Duckworth campaign”, to the point of harrassment. Probably 3 of the total said they were not going to vote for Tammy strictly because of the annoyance.
Oh, and, I’ll remind Archpundit’s readers that Tammy’s (and Dan Seal’s) campaign would have been a LOT more likely to succeed if the IL Dem party had a backbone and had redrawn the congressional maps to put more Dems in marginal districts like theirs. Unfortunately, our IL state reps really don’t give a damn about electing Democrats nationally.
We’re going to very, very lucky to see even 1 Democractic house pickup in Illinois.
November 7th, 2006 at
Had no problems voting in Palatine. I chose the touch screen option, which was very easy to use. Good thing too, as I had my 6 month old daughter with me.
November 7th, 2006 at
I voted early the other week. Is there ANY news on Duckworth yet? I don’t live in her district, but I’m anxious. Reading Mark’s comment was do disheartening.