We had a new way of voting on March 19. It was designed to avoid the undervoting and overvoting. Whether it succeeded is unclear. But one thing is clear: We no longer vote in secret in Cook County.
Consider the process: After voting, the voter takes his ballot and puts it in the counting machine. While the voter has a sleeve to put the ballot in, in order to run the ballot through the machine, he has to take it out of the sleeve. At that point, any election judge or poll watcher or precinct captain who wants can look at the punched card.
Although some people might say you cannot tell which holes are punched, that is not true.
It would be very easy to tell for holes near the edges or corners, and somebody who is really interested could tell for other holes too. It gets even worse if there is an undervote. In that case, the ballot is pushed back out of the machine, so everybody can see it again, until the voter decides what to do.
This new way of voting is great for precinct captains. Now instead of having to ask people how they voted, all they have to do is look.
While undervoting is a problem, the solution is not to give up the secret ballot.
