respublica

Paying Election Day Judges

Fox2 in St. Louis reported that city election day poll workers will be receiving a big boost in pay. It seems they currently do not have enough people to run the precincts efficiently and hope more money will bring in more workers. This election 300 dollars will be the pay. This is fair in my opinion. Working elections, which I did for over 20 years, can be very tiring and very boring on those times when very few voters care to come and vote. You must get to the precinct at least an hour before the polls open to set up, sit around all day until they close. After that is verifying the ballot counts etc, and taking them all to some official drop off place. Long day.

I looked to see what Madison County is paying this year. It's 125 dollars now with an extra 25 for attendance at the pre-election briefing. Also an extra 35 if doing nursing home ballots. Not bad, but frankly some election days go from 5 in the morning til 8 or 9 at night with many hours of just sitting and watching the clock move slowly. Madison County election people have long made sure everyone knew what they were doing and ran very efficient elections.

I did enjoy doing this however, and hope there are still people who will continue working the polls.

Primary Day again

I was looking over the sample ballot for today's Illinois primary election and I was kind of overwhelmed by all the offices involved and the candidates I have never heard of. This is not a good thing and at one point in time it was not the case because this area had good local papers which kept us regularly informed on what was going on locally and by whom.

The loss of newpapers is a sad loss.

Hundreds of ballots still to be tabulated

Now this takes the cake. I find this hard to believe. The April 6th local election in Madison County hasn't been finalized and there are several races still uncertain. It appears as though all the mail in ballots postmarked by April 6 are still to be counted. Apparently there are hundreds.

I am not sure how many races will be impacted by this but we shall see. The county clerk will begin tabulating these ballots on April 20 through the 27th.

Local Election Results

Here are the winning candidates from the Collinsville ballot.

For city council- Donna Green

For Collinsville Township Supervisor:

Derrick Keith Cox

Highway Commissioner:

Kathy Trucano Hoelscher

Trustees:

Clint Ball

Matthew Guenther

Brad Sewell

Ashley Stewart

Local Election Day

Local offices will be up for election tomorrow with most of us voting in the same precinct as always. In Collinsville the city council has only one race and with incumbent Donna Green running against David Jerome.

The Township has received the most attention with several seats up for grabs. For Supervisor- Derrick Keith Cox versus Daniel Hopkins.  Township Trustees have 8 people running for 4 seats and the ballot allows you to vote for 4 of the 8.

ROBERT MILAM
PAUL RYDGIG
BRAD SEWELL
ASHLEY CHRISTINE STEWART
AARON WRIGHT
MATTHEW GUENTHER
CLINT BALL
JASON REHG

The other 3 Township offices have only one person running. Assessor-Pete Poletti   Clerk-Jim Achenbach and Highway Commissioner-Kathy Trucano Hoelscher

Too often most local elections see really really low turnouts. It's your opportunity to vote for people who most affect you where you live. Go Vote. It's a good thing to do. And, it gives those election judges something to do during a really really long day.

A look back

I read this look at presidential election history and frankly, I thought it was extraordinary and astonishing. Matt Dawson wanted to learn if any past presidential election at all mirrored what was going on this year. He came across the Truman v Dewey year and boy, was it similar to 2020. The one thing we all learned in history class was from the Chicago Tribune headline blasting, Dewey Wins! But there was so much more. Read the whole thread if you're able, what an amazing piece of history.

I have no idea who is going to win today, most experts believe it will be Biden. But who knows these days, it's 2020 after all. What I do know is I am not going to sit around watching cable news all day.

 

We voted!

We got up early (as always) and left for our precinct around 5:30 this morning. It was dark out and we were in a line outside the Collinsville Senior Center for about 15 minutes or so and inside for another 7 before the 6 a.m. voting began. I was the second voter and Dale was the third. He ended up being the 4th person to submit his ballot to the tabulator judge, but he took a couple minutes longer to go over his ballot.

The Senior Center has two precincts, 1 and 2, which lessened the wait a bit as there are two rooms.

What surprised me was having all ballots be the fill in the circle type, not touch screen machines. I guess this is due to the virus and helping to cut down on many people touching the screens. I like getting to keep my pen more than the little stickers given out in the past.

So we did our civic duty and now can sit back and watch how thing go today.

Twas the Day before the Election

I just hope we won't be facing another 2000 election. Or, a 2016 election with half the country refusing to accept the results. It'll be what it is. But here is a question I've wondered about and maybe many others have as well. When are the early voting ballots actually tabulated?

Tabulating the ballots is not the same as counting the early ballots. The early ballots are processed at various times according to individual state election laws. Processing is comparing the signature on the outside envelope to the signature on file in the official record. Each state has their own time for doing this. In Illinois it is two days before the election, in Missouri five days before.  But the ballot in the sealed envelope is not opened at this time in most states.

The actual tabulation of early ballots are normally counted and added to the in-person ballots at the end of the election day. In Illinois this is done after 7 pm on election day when the polls have closed. I remember this very well during my years as a judge. In Missouri it is on election day as is true of most states. There are a few outlier states as usual. Those ballots are then opened and put into the tabulating machine.

Here is a chart showing how all the states handle the processing and actual tabulating.  

I find all this fascinating and frustrating while listening to many news reports trying to explain this. In the end, a state may have x number of early vote ballots but none (mostly) will be putting them into a machine til election day. So no one knows right now who is benefiting from them. No news report can be believed if they tell us such and such a state's early voting results  show one or the other ahead. They can't know this til the polls close.

And, one last thing. Voting is left to the counties and most are well prepared for any eventuality such as voting machine breakdown, the education of the on site judges, etc. Madison County has always made sure the local judges know what's what and why. Plus they are often the most efficient at getting the results out to the public quickly.

Counties who always seem to have problems is mostly due ( in my opinion) to the lack of preparing the on sight election workers.

How many have already voted?

I've been curious about the number of people who've gone out and voted early. Today the New York Times has all the percentages for each state. We've debated when we will vote and have gone back and forth on whether to go early or on election day. I'm a traditionalist at heart and feel election day makes voting kind of satisfying. I was an election judge for 20 years in Madison County which is maybe why the actual day means more to me. And, looking at the percent of early voters for each state, especially Illinois, I'm thinking maybe the precinct won't be terribly crowded. If that many have already voted, it should ease things considerably. The early voters stood in long lines, some waited a couple of hours to vote, made worse because voters from all precincts were in one place, not in individual precincts like on election day.

I may be dreaming, but we shall see. The Times is using the total number of 2016 voters as comparison for each state, admittedly a different time, but all we have.

In any event, 32 percent of Illinois voters have already voted. 19 percent of those in Missouri.

48 percent of Californians have voted, New Mexico and Montana are at 70 percent.

You can look at the totals for all states here. Some states will have election judges with not as much to do next week as other state judges.

How could I not know when to vote?

A question from some place named the Voting Information Center somehow got onto my Facebook page and asked me, "Do you know when to vote in Illinois? Diane, see voting deadlines to make sure you vote on time."

Come on man. We'd have to be living in a cave not to know when to vote. Actually we can actually pick a day there are so many available ahead of the official election day.