Believe this confirms the undervote do to folks not knowing how to vote!
Cook County 'undervote' sets off
alarm
Recount may yield clues to ballot errors
By Douglas Holt
Tribune Staff Writer
December 24, 2000
As election officials remain baffled over why many city and suburban voters
failed to cast a valid vote for president last month, a new Tribune analysis has
found the "undervote" in Cook County not only dwarfed the rest of the state
but was more than double that of the last two presidential elections.
The troubling phenomenon, which was particularly acute in African-American
and Hispanic neighborhoods, has sparked not only a detailed inquiry into
what went wrong, but also a top-to-bottom review of voting machines, ballot
layout and instructions, election judge training and voter education.
For the first time in the more than two decades since Cook County and
Chicago adopted punch-card voting technology, election officials said they
plan to seek court permission for a hand recount for a purpose other than an
election challenge by a losing candidate. The officials want to scrutinize at
least 5 percent of the November ballots in a hunt for clues as to what went
wrong.
"We're going to see whether there's any pattern or identifiable problem that
we can solve," said Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of
Election Commissioners.
Meanwhile, Cook County Board President John Stroger voiced support last
week for hearings early next year to examine what happened and how the
system should be improved. Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan
(D-Chicago) has said he will sponsor election reforms to safeguard against
ballots spoiled when voters accidentally punch the names of two or more
candidates running for the same office.
Typically, voting tapers off as voters head to the bottom of the ballot. That
was true this year as well: Fewer than half of Cook County voters last month
cast a vote on whether to retain the judge who was listed last.
Clearly, voting in the marquee race on the ballot was far better. Still, voters
either didn't punch a choice for president or punched too many, rendering the
vote uncountable in almost 123,000 of the nearly 2 million ballots cast—a
more than 6 percent failure. In some Chicago wards with large minority
populations, more than 12 percent of the ballots lacked a countable vote for
president.
The so-called undervote problem is similar to many of the problems
exhaustively scrutinized during the post-election standoff in Florida between
Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. But unlike that in
Florida, the race in Illinois wasn't close as Gore won easily.
So in the days immediately after the vote, election officials here expressed
little concern and downplayed the number of non-votes and dual votes as
routine. The Tribune review of statewide returns suggests otherwise.
Downstate and in the collar counties, only 2.3 percent of ballots contained no
countable presidential vote. In all of Cook County, the undervote was 6.2
percent. The disparity is all the more puzzling because the overwhelming
majority of Illinois counties use punch-card voting systems similar to those in
Cook County.
In 1996, the presidential undervote in Cook County was only 2.7 percent,
just slightly worse than the 2.2 percent in the rest of the state. In suburban
Cook County, the undervote was 1.8 percent in 1996, actually better than
the rest of the state. Results were similar in the 1992 presidential election.
So what happened? Officials suspect voter registration drives and a new
motor voter law allowing voter registration at driver's license facilities
succeeded in drawing infrequent or first-time voters, who are most apt to
make mistakes. They confronted a complicated ballot packed with dozens of
obscure judges and were denied the option to cast a simple straight-ticket
vote for all candidates of one party, a practice abolished by the General
Assembly in 1997.
"You combine a lot of new voters, long lines and a long ballot and you have a
recipe for voter error," Neal said.
At a news conference several weeks ago, Cook County Clerk David Orr
brushed aside questions about ballot problems that may have confused
voters. Now, he along with Chicago election officials say they've launched a
top-to-bottom review of voting machines, ballot layout and instructions,
election judge training and voter education.
In a recent interview, Orr said he was "shocked" by Cook County's steep
increase in presidential non-votes. "That was a very significant jump," he said.
"It was very surprising to us."
Leaders of minority groups say they are disturbed by something that
appeared to disenfranchise minority voters. If the problem is not understood
and corrected, they worry it could have a huge impact in close races to come.
"What happened in Illinois was a travesty," said Hilary Shelton, director of the
Washington bureau of the NAACP, which is conducting a nationwide inquiry
into voting irregularities that diminished the minority vote. "The strongholds of
the African-American community are where we had the most problems."
Though the non-vote percentage in Chicago was high, the worst of any
election district in the state was recorded in East St. Louis where 1 in 10
ballots cast did not include a recordable vote for president, double that of
1996.
Election officials in the mostly African-American Mississippi River community
attributed the increase to a new optical scanning system, the same kind that
many experts claim will help reduce ballot confusion often inherent in
punch-card systems.
A handful of other Illinois jurisdictions also used optical scanners on Election
Day with few problems. But those systems worked a little different than in
East St. Louis, where officials opted to save money by forgoing the purchase
of equipment that allowed voters to feed their ballots into a tabulating machine
that would spit it back if it was erroneously marked.
McHenry County offered such a feature to its voters this year, and as a result
the undervote there was negligible.
Though Cook County still uses punch cards, the technology exists to allow
instant tabulation—and instant spotting of errors. But state law bars use of the
features on punch-card equipment. "I can't stress enough the legislature will
not give us the authority to simply flip the switch and use this technology,"
Neal said.
Robert Starks, a Northeastern Illinois University political scientist, said the
disparities cry out for a bipartisan commission to set minimum standards for
voting systems statewide. Rep. Jeffrey Schoenberg (D-Evanston) said he will
propose a state low-interest loan program to help poor counties buy accurate
voting machines.
But equipment is not the only concern. In Chicago, relatively poor,
high-minority wards had far higher percentages of non-votes than wealthy
wards, despite the fact that the machines used were identical across the
county.
In the lakefront 43rd Ward, for example, only 2.5 percent of ballots showed
no vote for president this year. Meanwhile, in Ald. Isaac Carothers' 29th
Ward on the West Side, 12 percent of the ballots—2,627 in all—lacked a
recordable presidential vote.
"It's hard for me to believe, the way African-Americans went to the polls, that
in my ward many people would not have cast a vote for that office,"
Carothers said. "They were marching in to vote for Al Gore."
To reduce errors, Cook County and Chicago officials are redesigning the
ballot, simplifying instructions and translating all instructions to Spanish—such
as a warning on ballot cards that now says in English only: "STOP. You are
inserting the card WRONG SIDE UP."
They plan better training for election judges who are supposed to
demonstrate to voters how to insert and punch voting cards correctly, much
as flight attendants tell airline passengers how to buckle a seat belt.
Particularly in poor communities where education levels are low, some voters
may be reluctant to reveal that they're confused, Stroger said.
"A lot of people feel embarrassed to ask questions, and to stand up there
before everybody and say 'I need some help,' or 'I can't read this,'" he said.
But he added: "I think most people who went to vote really intended to vote
for the president." |
