Judging by local press reports from the last election you would think that the Populex voting system used in the last few elections was a big hit with voters. But I heard about two dozen people say how much they prefer this year's paper ballots over the electronic voting machines. I didn't hear anyone say the old Populex machines were better. Many voters asked why we weren't using the Populex system again this year.
The one complaint I heard about the new system is how difficult it is to keep your vote private. Throughout the day an election judge was near the ballot counting machine to instruct voters and make sure each ballot had the initials of another election judge. I did that for the last few hours of voting. Judges were supposed to stand a "few feet" from the machine and try not to look at people's ballots while the voter fed them in to be counted.
On the one hand it was important to be nearby because some people had trouble inserting the ballots without a little encouragement to keep sliding it into the machine. Also, it's important to be nearby in case there's an error reading the ballot.
Sometimes a ballot would come back with an error message and had to be re-inserted. The most common message said that no image was detected on one side of the ballot, even though the voter had filled in ovals on both sides. In those cases we inserted the ballot again and no message popped up. A few people actually hadn't voted on both sides and went back to finish after realizing that there were more races to vote on.
The problem for an election judge standing nearby is that people had difficulty keeping their ballot covered with the oversized "voter privacy" folder while inserting the ballot to be counted. Most people ended up opening their folder, or they struggled to push their ballot in while keeping it inside the folder.
It was difficult for me as a judge to instruct people who were having trouble inserting the ballot while also allowing them to feel that no one could see their vote. A number of people said they didn't care if I saw their ballot but one woman told me I wasn't supposed to be standing so close when I thought she was having trouble inserting the ballot.
Smaller voter privacy folders without a side tab or more detailed instructions for voters might solve the problem.
The only effort I saw to unduly influence the election was a perfectly legal decision by the County Clerk to not have the voting machines alert voters when they skipped voting in a race. I'll probably write more about that in another post.