Last year Sangamon county used Populex voting machines that alerted a voter when they skipped voting in a race, also known as an undervote. This year we used a new ballot counting machine that has the ability to give a similar message alerting voters that they skipped a race. An ES&S fact sheet for the ballot counting machines used in Sangamon County states:
In the event of overvoted and undervoted situations, the Model 100 can immediately return the ballot to the voter, displaying the specific race in question in the LCD display. Voters may then instruct the Model 100 to “Accept” or “Return” the ballot through the simple push of a button.Additionally, I googled an article about the machine which claims:
The ES&S machine turned out to better communicate residual votes to voters by displaying the number of undervotes that appeared on the ballot. After scanning his or her ballot, if the machine found undervotes, the voter is prompted to either eject the ballot to make corrections or continue on leaving the undervote as is. In addition, the machines can be programmed to go through each of the undervotes on the ballot, allowing the voter to eject it or continue on. This feature allows voters to select to undervote on a specific race without unintentionally undervoting on other races that may follow.During the training for election judges I asked if people would be alerted about undervotes and was told they would not be. The day before the election I read on the ES&S website that the machines were capable of alerting undervotes so I called the election office to double check. The woman I spoke with said that the machines would have an alert for undervotes.
That was good news but after getting two different answers I wasn't sure what to expect on election day. I raised the question with the other election judges before the polls opened. One remembered being told that there was no alert for undervotes and another thought that there would only be a message if someone cast a blank ballot with no votes in any race at all. The others weren't sure.
During the day it became obvious that the ballot counting machine was not alerting voters who skipped voting in a race. It never happened once. Apparently, the County Clerk had the option of programming the machines to alert voters when they skipped a race but chose not to.
This has obvious implications in a year when large numbers of new voters were expected to cast their vote for Obama. A Democratic Presidential candidate won Sangamon county for the first time in many years and the tide of new Democratic voters was sure to have an impact on other races down the ballot.
Looking at the voting results I don't see any races where the margin of victory was less than the number of undervotes. Thank goodness. But, no one knew that would be the case before election day, and there were several close races. It easily could have made the difference in a close race this year or in future elections.
The biggest undervotes were in uncontested races, which is normal. There were large undervotes for races on the back of the ballot, including retention of judges, and 6,337 people didn't vote on the proposition to reduce the size of the county board.
Some people didn't like that the old Populex system alerted people when they undervoted. The decision to not have the new system do the same is defensible. There are reasonable arguments to make for that decision. What's indefensible is the lack of effort to inform the public about a significant change and the failure to clearly emphasize that change to election judges who also could have informed voters.
The only news coverage I saw about the change was a single line in passing buried near the end of one SJR article. There was no mention that this was an optional programming decision made by election officials. I found no mention of the change on the county website or anywhere else that was likely to be seen by many voters. I saw no attempt to ask voters in advance if they would like the undervote feature programmed into the machines this year. That's hardly the level of attention called for by a major change in the voting process that could have altered the result of a close election.
I don't know that this was a deliberate attempt to influence the outcome of closely contested local races. I'm not going to engage in mind-reading accusations. It's just as likely that this happened because it's standard operating procedure for county Republican leaders who like to keep things "under the radar." Distributing information on a "need to know" basis is typical for Sangamon county government from rate increases by the Sanitary Board to the selection of the Populex voting system by a committee of insiders who made no effort to seek public input.
A majority of voters didn't vote for change in Sangamon county government this year. I suspect local Republicans will keep getting re-elected as long as local new outlets continue to let them do most things under the radar. It would be nice to see a news article telling us who approved this decision and why voters weren't better informed. I won't hold my breath.