Reply #10: OpEd: IL: How I Spent Election Day [View All]

[rumpel]

November 9, 2006 at 23:23:01

by Joan Brunwasser

http://www.opednews.com



How I spent Election Day
by Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor, OpEdNews November 9, 2006

It's old news already, fit only for wrapping fish. But I need to tell my story. Then, I'll be able to move on. Please humor me.

I took the day off. I knew that I would be spending a lot of time online posting articles and charting election reports and progress for OpEdNews I had a horrific nightmare the night before about getting to the polls and being told that I wasn't registered, rendering me one of the 'disappeared'. I was so unnerved, I couldn't go back to sleep. I was filled with dread about the election, anyway; this just pushed me over the edge. I delayed going to vote, fearing that my dream would come true.

My dream and aborted sleep led to my writing an OpEd piece early in the morning. While I was putting the finishing touches on it, I got a call from Bob Wilson, an election judge in Evanston. He reported having no provisional ballot affidavits (form 501) as well as a shortage of the special pens with archival ink needed for paper ballots. His frustration trying to get through to the repair center (eighteen calls yielding busy signals and one ten minute hold to reach help) was a harbinger of things to come, locally and across the country. Official news sources stressed how smoothly everything went, but if you scratched beneath the surface, it was a different story entirely. BradBlog, Daily Voting News and OpEdNews carried regular updates. Everyone went ahead and voted here (Cook County, Illinois) on Sequoia machines very recently in the news. On November 2nd, less than a week before the elections, http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3714 it was revealed that the touch-screen version has a special button which can be used to flip to 'manual mode' allowing unlimited votes. When election officials were cornered on this subject, they assured voters that the machines would be closely monitored to catch any improper behavior. Where I voted, the machines were at least fifty feet from the poll workers' table. There's absolutely no way the machines could have been properly supervised unless the poll workers got up and looked over the voters' shoulders. They weren't doing that when I was there. So much for quality control. Anyone spot a potential problem here?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_joan_bru_061109_how_i_spent_election.htm