Order for the ballot in November:

Green
Democrat
Republican

In races where there is no Green Party candidate the Democrats will appear first.

Important note. This only applies to the Green Party as an established political party. In those areas where they are not established (for example, State Representative District 103) they will appear after the established political party candidates in the order which they file.

Vacancies in nomination can occur for a number of reasons. The legal time to fill a vacancy depends upon the reason for the vacancy. Of immediate concern to the established political parties are vacancies in nomination created by the failure of the party to nominate someone at the March 21st, Primary Election. The last day to fill those types of vacancies is Monday, May 22nd. The spreadsheet link below shows the list of vacancies where there was no candidate nominated in the primary.

VacanciesInNomination2006.xls

One issue that came up in the March primary was the lack of a “receipt” given to voters on election day. I heard this question on election day, saw comments about it on the blog, was asked about it at election judge schools, and finally received another question on WDWS when I was on Penny for your Thoughts recently.

Prior to the advent of purely electronic or touch screen voting systems, no one really cared about a “receipt”. Many systems never had anything at all (like lever systems) or had something that was not really a receipt. Some people seemed to classify the stub on your punch card ballot as a receipt. It had no information on it, and quite frankly, you could have grabbed a stub from any punch card in America and it would not be distinguishable from the one in Champaign County. I compare the punch card stub to a grocery sack. It might demonstrate that you were in the store, but it does nothing to prove that you bought anything.

The confusion seems to stem from the evolution of the debate about electronic voting. When electronic voting began, people were complaining about a lack of a paper trail. Quite simply, the integrity of the election was in the hands of computer programmers. Even extensive testing could fail to reveal the designs of a master programmer.

What most election integrity advocates wanted was a paper trail. They wanted votes to be cast on an actual piece of paper, much like punch card does, so that any programming manipulation could be counterbalanced by a hand count of ballots. The idea of a receipt for electronic voting is a half way solution to a problem. The paper trail, as exists with the system we have in Champaign County, is far more preferable than a “receipt.”

People have also suggested that they be provided a piece of paper showing how they voted. Once again, that might look good, but it would do nothing to prove that the computer is actually tallying the votes correctly. Additionally, that piece of paper would facilitate vote fraud in a way that the political machines could only dream of.

The hand count of ballots in County Board district 9, which matched the computer count, demonstrates clearly the value of having a paper trail as provided by the optical scan equipment. However, there is no guarantee in any election that a hand count will happen. As such, I’m going to implement a change in future elections.

State law currently requires that we retabulate 5% of the precincts after election day (that means six in Champaign County) and prior to the canvass of votes. The State Board of Elections randomly selects those precincts. This year, when those six precincts were selected, representatives of the Democratic, Republican, and Green Parties ran the ballots through a tabulator and compared results with those from election day. In the future, I will randomly assign two precincts to each of the three established political parties and ask them to select one race in each of those precincts to hand count. Then, we will have a team of individuals from the parties conduct a hand count of ballots. With this policy, we will have a guarantee of a hand count of ballots in each election that will give voters in Champaign County absolute confidence that the tabulating machines are actually counting the ballots in the same way that the ballots are being voted.

I haven’t heard of this happening in other jurisdictions in the country, but I’d be interested in your thoughts and suggestions on this idea.