When Chicago and suburban Cook County voters go to the polls for the March 19th primary, they’ll see the fruits of the Florida ballot mess. Ballots will be immediately screened for dimples and hanging chads and the other peculiarities that have become part of the lore of the 2000 election.
The screening will alert voters if they have failed to make a choice properly and will allow them a chance to fix their mistakes and ensure their ballots will be counted.
Voters will insert their ballots into a machine called the precinct ballot counter, which will shoot properly cast ballots into a sealed box.
If something is wrong with the ballot, it will pop back out and the problem will be identified on a digital readout. The voter will have the chance to fix that ballot or cast a new ballot.
The device will also check to make sure that a judge has initialed each ballot. Without those initials, the votes don’t count.
This may take some getting used to. It may also invite some suspicion in Chicago, which has not yet forgotten the history of prying precinct captains who thought the “problem” with your ballot was that you voted for the wrong candidate.
So it’s important to know that even with the new procedure, there is no need for an election judge or anyone else to touch or peek at your ballot. If you make a mistake, you can fix it yourself.
Ballot books have also been redesigned to avoid confusion. No butterfly ballots. Names will be closer to the ballot numbers.
The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Cook County Clerk’s office made an investment three years ago in the screening machines, but state law blocked them from fully using the devices, and the legislature refused to change the law.
The 2000 election, in which more than 6 percent of voters in Chicago and Cook County failed to register a vote for president, helped Chicago and Cook County officials win a court order allowing the screening features to be used.
Last February, the city and county piloted the counters in two Chicago wards and several suburbs. In Chicago, falloffs or rejected ballots dropped from 7 percent to 1 percent. Officials believe the 1 percent may have been because absentee ballots cannot be screened for mistakes.
The next step is to see how well the precinct ballot counters work in an election with a heavier turnout. But the initial results have been encouraging, and they suggest that the counters will help to restore faith in the election system, faith that was shaken in 2000.
