With an increase in absentee ballots expected for the November, 6 election, the Cook County Clerk’s office has purchased a new mail-in ballot counting machine, said Noah Praetz, deputy director of elections.
“We process one ballot every 4 minutes,” said Praetz while speaking to a graduate class at DePaul University. When it used to take 10 minutes to count ballots by hand, the new $216,000 machine has proved to be more efficient.
Noah Praetz In Reporting for Converged Newsrooms Class on 9/17/2012
“We expect and are ramping up for a much greater portion of voting than four years ago,” Praetz said, “there were only about 25,000 absentee ballots returned I think we can even double, triple, quadruple that.”
Praetz, gave a general overview about how the Cook County Clerk office operates during the election process. However voting, was just one of the topics brought up. Absentee voting was a hot button issue among the students. Absentee ballots in the state of Illinois appear to be in greater numbers this year. In addition the process of absentee voting has become easily accessible.
“All you have to do is go to our website, and get the application,” Praetz said.
Absentee voting gives people who might not be able to make it back to their home state, a chance to vote at their current residence. People such as college students and the homeless, can go out to certain polling areas and vote.
“There’s no excuse,” Praetz said.
There are various ways to send information to the clerks office. Voters can mail in their applications or send them via the internet. Absentee voters also need to know to bring two forms of identification which show your current address, unless voting earlier. If voting absentee, know that you have a 28 day registration period, before the election with a seven day grace period that runs through the saturday before the election.
“Many polling stations have been equipped with new voting machines and safety technologies,” Praetz said.
“We had to invest in a new infrastructure for counting ballots,” Praetz said.
The new machines were paid for by a $25 million federal grant from the 2002 Help America Vote Act, Praetz said. The new devices come with new safer precautions, while voting. Both physical and cyber security have also been increased throughout the voting process.
New machines, and security upgrades in polling areas, currently restrict a paper trail. There are also forensic audits that are taken during election to help monitor the software with the polling machines. This is done to ensure that each machine is running smoothly and warn voting stations of any viral or physical threats.
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