New pictures from Cook County primary election

I received a series of interesting photographs from the recent Cook County primary election from Michelle Shafer (VP for Communications and External Affairs, Sequoia Voting Systems). Michelle is a long-time reader of Election Updates, and knows how much election geeks like Thad and I love election-day snapshots.

  1. Polling place sign. There are a number of photos in this set that show the signs used by Cook County, utilizing interesting color and font combinations. This one is in three languages.
  2. Ballot scanning device in precinct. Michelle explained in an email to me that the blue enclosure and bag were Cook County ideas; apparently the purpose of the blue bag is to capture ballots with write-in candidates so that the election judges can more easily figure out the number of write-in ballots when they do precinct tabulation.
  3. This shows the election judge’s table, and some of their materials (slightly blurred).
  4. Here we see two election judges, stacks of ballots, and other materials being used by the election judges.
  5. Voter’s Bill of Rights. At one point Thad and I had signs like these from a visit we made to Cook County, but they are somewhere in deep VTP storage!
  6. Additional signs.
  7. Polling place exterior. Note the “Alternative entrance” sign.
  8. This is a particularly nice photo showing the layout of voting devices in one precinct. Note the electronic voting device on the left for accessible voting, five booths for voters to use to fill out their optical scan ballots, and the precinct ballot scanner in it’s snazzy blue booth on the right.
  9. Here’s a photo of the instruction sheet for use of the precinct electronic voting device. Note that it is in English and Spanish.

Thanks, Michelle for sharing these with us fellow election geeks.

Interestingly, it turns out that both Thad and I are going to be in Chicago attending a conference at the same time that there will be a meeting of the Illinois State Board of Elections in Chicago regarding their March 2006 primary. We are hoping to attend that meeting!

UPDATE: April 8, 2006.

The following is from Michelle Shafer, as it turned out that some of these photos were actually taken by Elaine Larson, Assistant Registrar of Voters in Santa Clara, California: “Michelle wanted to acknowledge that many of the pictures she passed along were taken by Elaine Larson, Assistant Registrar of Voters for Santa Clara County, California. Elaine was officially observing Cook County’s election as Santa Clara will be using the same Sequoia touchscreen equipment with the VVPAT printer for the June 6th California primary that Chicago used in theirs. Elaine stated in an email that it is “important to show and tell how well the election was set up and worked” from her perspective.”

Thanks again to Michelle — and now to Elaine — for providing these photos to us and letting us use them in our work!