Undervoting policy causes angst: Voters will be asked if they meant to leave blanks on ballots
MORRISON – Come February, it’ll be legal to vote twice in Illinois – sort of.
Electronic scanners across the Sauk Valley have been reprogrammed to reject incomplete ballots, a change that could result in thousands of voters being asked their intent on Election Day.
Voters will be asked if they made a mistake by not voting in a particular race, and will be given an opportunity to fill in the empty bubble.
Elections officers statewide are taking similar measures to accommodate the so-called undervote clause in the 2007 Illinois Election Code. An undervote happens when a ballot does not contain the number of votes allowed in a designated race. The undervote clause was designed to ensure voters had every opportunity to fill in the bubble on statewide constitutional offices, such as governor, lieutenant governor, state attorney general, secretary of state, state comptroller, state treasurer and U.S. senator.
Illinois is the only state to have such a provision, and it has upset some elections officials, at least one of whom took the State Board of Elections to court because he thinks it violates voters’ rights to cast private ballots.
Dana Nelson, Whiteside County clerk and recorder, calls it “a terrible idea.” Her office spent $5,400 reprogramming scanners in time for the Feb. 2 primary.
“Voters often have a number of reasons to undervote,” Nelson said. “There’s just a lot of issues with this.”
Lee County Clerk Nancy Nelson calls it “idiotic” and “an ego trip” for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who pushed for the clause.
Lee County spent about $4,500 making the change. Both clerks have been told a state grant will reimburse the county governments, but neither are optimistic that will happen, and Nancy Nelson remains opposed to the expenditure on principle.
“Even if it’s not local money, it’s still taxpayer dollars ... and there are 111 election jurisdictions that have to do this,” Nancy Nelson said. “Imagine what it’ll cost Rockford or Cook County ... in the millions, I’m sure.”
Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden has filed a lawsuit there, contending that voters who don’t make a selection in uncontested races will be forced to publicly declare their decision, since they will be asked by election judges whether their intention was to not vote for the lone candidate.
That, Shelden says, “flies in the face of the right to a secret ballot.”
Sixth Judicial Circuit Judge Michael Jones denied Shelden’s request for an emergency injunction to overrule the state Elections Board for the February primaries, although he left open the possibility of the lawsuit stopping the measure in the November midterm elections.
“I think we’ll win, but not in time for the February primaries ... especially when everyone starts to see all the problems this causes,” Shelden said.
In Whiteside and Lee counties, voting machines will reject ballots with undervotes in any race, because the machines can’t be programmed to pick and choose which races to watch for, the clerks said.
Even ballot box manufacturers are wringing their hands over the potential fallout.
Premier Elections Solutions told the state Elections Board in November it intended to ask clerks to sign forms releasing the company from legal liability if it agreed to county-level requests to ignore the undervote clause, according to the board’s meeting minutes.
Ogle County Clerk Rebecca Huntley said machines there will beep at voters for each race undervoted – then reject ballots if voters are unable to navigate the computer-generated questions quickly enough.
While less conspicuous than having voters standing before machines with ballots in hand, Huntley fears the scanner won’t give voters enough time to press accept before it kicks out the ballot.
“I’m very concerned about how the voters are going to handle this,” Huntley said. “It’s an attempt to take away some of their privacy.”
How it will work
The undervote clause in the 2007 Election Code Act goes into effect Jan. 1, which makes the February primary the first election in which the judges will have to override ballot scanners now programmed to reject incomplete ballots.
If voters want to leave any or all races or elections blank, they can do so. But to accommodate an undervoted ballot, election judges will have to ask voters whether they meant to.
■ In Lee and Whiteside counties, that all means voters will slip their ballots into the voting machine as usual, wait for the machine to generate a list of undervoted races and spit out the ballot, then hold onto their ballot as election judges ask – race by race – whether they really wanted to leave the space empty.
■ In Ogle County, the procedure will be the same, except that machines will hold onto the ballots and simply beep at judges, rather than spit out the ballot.
The difference is attributed to computer limitations of various ballot box manufacturers.
Other ways to vote
Tuesday is the last day to register to vote in the February primary.
The 2010 Illinois primary election will be held Feb. 2 – the earliest date in Illinois history – but eligible voters can cast a ballot in person at the office of an election official or at an early voting center Jan. 11-28.
Ogle County
Clerk Rebecca Huntley’s office is temporarily in Mount Morris, on the third floor of the former Watt Publishing Co. building at 122 S. Wesley Ave., while the Ogle County Courthouse is being renovated. The number is 815-732-1110.
Whiteside County
Clerk Dana Nelson’s office, Whiteside County Courts Building, 202 E. Knox St., Morrison, 815-772-5189.
Lee County
Clerk Nancy Nelson’s office, Old Lee County Courthouse, 112 E. Second St., Dixon, 815-288-3309.
Absentee ballots can be applied for through Jan. 28.
