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Though the smoking ban has had little effect on local sports bars so far, the true test begins soon with the arrival of warmer weather.

Whoever said soccer brings the world together could never have envisioned the frustration felt by 43rd Ward residents over the installation of a soccer field in Lincoln Park.

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The play used to raise shockwaves - and now raises money for the annual V-Day campaign to end violence against women and children.

Chicago has lined up a litany of "V-Day" performances to celebrate the 10th anniversary of women's rights activist Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.

V-Day productions kick off on Valentine's Day at Metropolis Coffee, 1039 W. Granville Ave., Chicago, and include V-Day Chicago 2008 on March 6 and 7 in Wicker Park.

For the "V to the 10th" of what has become a global grassroots movement for women, Ensler included a new play, A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer and the 2004 documentary "Until the Violence Stops."

It's up to local production directors to include the optional additional material.

The V-Day Chicago 2008 performance won't include all those components, but performers are adding another interpretive monologue with music. Many Chicago venues are celebrating V-Day from Valentines Day until the end of March.

"[V-Day] is about celebrating women and what makes us the wonders that we are," said Hollis Rabin, who is directing and organizing V-Day Chicago 2008. "It's about standing up for ourselves and our sisters, and having our voices heard."

Each year, the thousands of V-Day performances in public auditoriums and on college campuses focus on a particular cause, which will benefit the Katrina Warriors Network this year. Ten percent of profits from each performance all over the world go to one spotlight fund.

Katrina Warriors Network is a coalition of organization that helps women in New Orleans and the Gulf. The rest of the profits from V-Day Chicago 2008 will go to the Chicago Abused Women's Coalition.

The spotlight V to the Tenth celebration in the New Orleans Superdome on April 12 will feature V-Day activists from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Celebrity speakers include Chicago's Oprah Winfrey.

V-Day's official holiday is Valentine's Day, a day to express love to a special someone. V-Day reclaimed the holiday because women rarely "make a point" to love themselves, Rabin said.

"[The day is] to love what makes us women and stand up and work to end the violence," she said. "And we won't stop until we have claimed a victory over it."

------------------ RELATED LINKS ------------------ ------ Title: V to the 10th Web site URL: http://v10.vday.org/ ------ ------ Title: V-Day's Web site URL: http://www.vday.org/main.html ------ ------------------ Sidebar(s) ------------------ ------ Headline: V-Day Performances Body:

V-Day Chicago 2008 Performances of The Vagina Monologues:

Thursday, March 6 at 7 p.m., and Friday, March 7 at 7 p.m, at the Pulaski Park District Auditorium, 1419 W. Blackhawk St, Chicago.

Get Tickets: e-mail vdaychicago2008@gmail.com to reserve tickets. Cash only.

Other Chicago Community Performances:

Feb. 14, 6 p.m., Metropolis Coffee, 1039 W. Granville Ave., Chicago,

March 21 and 22, 8 p.m. - LaCosta Theater, 3931 N. Elston Ave. 2nd floor, Chicago

March 26, 7 p.m. - Center on Halsted, 3656 N Halsted St., Chicago
March 28 and 29, 7:30 p.m. - Hinsdale Community House-Kettering Hall, 415 W. Eighth St., Hinsdale
Scheduled College Performances:

Feb. 15, 7 p.m. and Feb. 16, 1:30 p.m. - McCormick Theological Seminary, Common Room, 5460 S. University Ave., Chicago

Feb. 15 and 16, 7 p.m. - Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Thorne Auditorium, 375 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago

Feb. 16 and 17, 8 p.m. - DePaul University, Student Center, 2250 N Sheffield Ave., MPR Room 120, Chicago

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.