Follow this link for the absentee and early voting numbers so far. This link will show you a comparison with two years ago. We’ll keep it updated at some point each day.

Each primary election I get numerous phone calls from voters who are disturbed by the Illinois requirement that you declare your party affiliation at the polling place on election day in order to be able to participate in the party primaries. I’ll try here to give some explanation for why this is done.

Before examining the closed primary system, it is good to identify the terms, which often confuse people. A closed primary is one that is closed to people who are not members of the party. In Illinois, you become a member of the party on election day by OPENLY declaring your membership in the party that day. An open primary is one where you don’t have to declare your affiliation.

The closed primary is set up to prevent what is called party raiding. That is the practice of members of one party crossing over and influencing the primary of the opposite party. Those “raiders” could either vote for a candidate who holds views very similar to their own party or, more cynically, for a candidate that they believe would be easiest to beat.

In years where the nomination is far from certain (like 2008) this is not a major issue. But in years where one party’s nominee is certain (for example the Republicans in 2004) it could be an issue.

The Republican and Democratic Party Delegate selection rules each recognize this concern and thus require that a person’s party affiliation be publicly declared.

The Republican Party rules state: (page 8 )
(2) Only persons eligible to vote who are deemed as a matter of public record to be Republicans pursuant to state law or, if voters are not enrolled by party, by Republican party rules of a state, shall participate in any primary election held for the purpose of electing delegates or alternate delegates to the national convention or in any Republican caucus, mass meeting, or mass convention held for the purpose of selecting delegates to the county, district, or state conventions, and only such legal and qualified voters shall be elected as delegates to county, district, and state conventions;

The Democratic Party rules state:
1. Democratic voters shall be those persons who publicly declare their Party preference and have that preference publicly recorded.

So while the Illinois legislature could alter the law to make Illinois an open primary state, it is likely that neither party would recognize the results of that election.

The “closedness” of primaries across the country varies. In Illinois, there is no declaration of party at the time of voter registration. Instead, you publicly declare your affiliation on the day you vote in the primary election, regardless of how you have voted in the past. In fact, you could even declare for one party, get in the polling booth, change your mind after you see the ballot, return the ballot to the judges, and get a new ballot of another party!

Illinois law changed this past year to become more forgiving of party switching. In previous elections, if you had signed a petition for a candidate of one political party for a primary election, you were unable to vote in the same primary election for a different political party. Now you can vote in any primary, regardless of what petitions you may have signed in the past.

Compare that to the State of Florida. There you have to register your party affiliation with the County Election Office at least four weeks prior to the primary. So for Florida voters, that would need to have been done prior to the first votes being cast in Iowa.

Because so many voters in Champaign County, and throughout the state, routinely switch their party affiliation from one primary to another, no one should skip voting because they feel that they are being “labeled” when they declare their affiliation on February 5.

This presidential primary season has been the most exciting in my lifetime. I expect record turnout, even with the closed primary rule.

I don’t think this is a harbinger of the end of civilization, but its interesting that last year our office issued only 1,090 marriage licenses, the fewest since 1962! That’s 45% below the high year of 1980, when we issued 1,974 licenses.

Here are the total licenses issued by year for the century so far.

Year Number
2007 1,090
2006 1,208
2005 1,193
2004 1,290
2003 1,315
2002 1,203
2001 1,230
2000 1,349

Some questions have been raised about the consequences of a candidate being removed from the ballot due to an objection to their nomination papers. I’ll explain a few things that happen.

First, a common question we receive regarding elections is “How long does it take to print the ballots?” This typically comes about when there are questions about candidate certifications that might delay the opening of absentee voting.

Practically speaking, the printing of the ballot is no barrier to absentee and early voting. We do not print the ballots for absentee and early voting in bulk, but rather print them from a computer as they are needed. This means that as soon as the ballots are designed in house and some testing is conducted, they can be used for absentee voting. This saves us lots of money. Also, because the particular ballots are linked by computer to your voter registration, it prevents you from getting the wrong ballot when you come to vote.

It also makes sense from a purely logistical point. We have over 900 different ballots for this election. Imagine trying to design a system to store them in bulk for absentee voting so that they could be quickly retrieved. It would be virtually impossible.

Second, the removal of the candidate’s name from the ballot is in some ways easy, but also fraught with some concerns. Anytime you change the ballot, you have to make sure that those changes don’t impact the rest of the ballot. For example, if you’re not careful, oval positions can change. We will conduct quite a few tests to make sure that the ballot changes that we make when removing a candidate, don’t create problems in other areas.

Of course, the whole process might have to be redone if changes made today get reversed in future days.

As to the ballots on election day, we have plans to order about 3300 for County Board District 9 Democrats. Our printer has assured us that those can be done as late as Saturday prior to the election. We certainly hope we don’t need to wait that long, but if necessary we can.