Better backups help make count smooth

Chicago polling sites reported several minor machine errors Tuesday during voting hours, but the day was relatively free of the major problems that have plagued previous Illinois elections.

City officials had maintained the electronic voting machine kinks that marred elections in 2006 would not be a problem this year, thanks to better backup systems, repeated system tests and more experienced judges, said Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen.

Voters entering the polling place had the option of two separate mechanisms: an ATM-like touch screen machine, and an optical scan machine in which voters drew a line next to their pick before placing the paper ballot in a scanner.

In one 50th Ward polling place, the U Lucky Dawg restaurant on Western Ave., a defective scanner machine needed to be replaced, so for a few hours North Side voters were forced to use touch screens.

"It's why every technician has an extra machine," said ward service technician Adam Cannon, who hauled in the replacement scanner a few hours after the error was reported. "It was pretty simple and probably happening quite a bit today."

Later Cannon delivered activator cards missing from the equipment package delivered to a Northwest Side precinct on West Peterson -- cards needed just to start up the touch screen machine. After that, he headed to another precinct to restock the pens used for the optiscan machine. "A lot of voters were walking off with the pens," Cannon said.

According to an assortment of election judges, the majority of city voters chose to use the optiscans. In a 1st Ward precinct in Ukrainian Village, about 150 voters had used the optiscan and only three used the touch screen by midafternoon.

When the polls closed at 7 p.m., election judges moved to collect memory cards in each machine. The memory cards compiled the vote totals throughout the day.

Judges placed each cartridge, one by one, in another machine that consolidated precinct totals and then electronically transmitted the results to a central computer at the board of elections office on Washington Street, Allen said.

If the transmission step doesn't work, memory cards are brought directly to a predetermined local high school where backup machines can send the totals. If that still doesn't work, judges bring the cards directly downtown.

In the November 2000 general election before Chicago went electronic, over 120,000 Illinois punch card ballots failed to register a vote for president, more votes unaccounted for than the number caught in Florida chad limbo. But even if all those votes were cast for George W. Bush, the state's 21 electoral votes still would have been deposited in the Al Gore bank.

But problems continued when Illinois switched to a fully electronic system in 2006. In the March primaries and November elections, there were widespread reports of paper jams in the optiscans, long delays in counting and missing memory cards in Cook and DuPage counties.

"I feel like I have to learn something new every year, and I don't want to mess something up," said election judge Nancy Thomas at her Ukrainian Village post, who has been working elections since the 1970s. "We used to feel beat up at the end of the day, but now it's just brain-wracking."

A panel led by former U.S. Circuit Court Judge Abner Mikva -- and filled with local techies -- found the 2006 system failures were due to a blip in the connection between the transmitters at the local polling sites and the receivers tallying the votes.