Jan 04 2008
Candidate Removal from the Ballot
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.
