La Salle County debuts new touchscreen voting option

Early voting starts Thursday and La Salle County now offers old-fashioned paper ballots or using a touchscreen to cast your vote. The choice is yours.

The county’s electoral hardware was getting old. Cybersecurity is a threat in all walks of life. That spurred the La Salle County Board to approve the purchase of updated voting machines with federal COVID-19 relief funds (the American Rescue Plan Act).

I want everything safe and secure in La Salle County.”

—  Jennifer Ebner, La Salle County clerk

Here’s what to know about the new equipment and how it works.

You pick

When you report to your precinct, be prepared to give your name and sign the form, just as you have in previous election cycles. Then, the election judge will ask if you want a paper ballot or if you wish to vote using the touchscreen.

“You don’t have to use it,” La Salle County Clerk Jennifer Ebner said of the new machinery. “But if you so choose, you can do it this way.”

If you vote by touchscreen, the judge will walk you to the booth. No, the judge won’t peer over your shoulder while you vote. Rather, the judge will use a QR code reader to pull up your ballot, ensuring you get the correct set of contests, then hit the start button and walk away for you to vote in privacy.

Don’t like the digital options? No problem: You can switch to a paper ballot. The touchscreen machines include a cancel function that will let you abort the touchscreen process. You then can ask the election judge for a paper ballot.

ADA-compliant

Do you have cataracts or macular degeneration? The machines include settings that let you adjust the font size and brightness. For the legally blind, there is a headset that will provide companion audio to help you make selections. There also is a keypad with large buttons and Braille.

Ebner said compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act was a top priority in acquiring the new hardware.

Don’t keep the ‘receipt’

If you use the touchscreen, the machine will spit out a long slip of paper showing the votes you cast. Don’t fold that into your wallet or purse: it is not a receipt, it is actually your live ballot. That ballot has to be inserted into the tabulator for your votes to be counted.

First, however, an election judge has to initial the back of the ballot. Hand it in face down so that only the blank side is facing up and the election judge cannot see your votes. Once the printout is initialed, it can be inserted into the tabulator, and then you’re done.

Other benefits

Ebner and the County Board had other benefits in mind when they opted for the new machinery. The previous machines were cumbersome and therefore a burden for election judges, many of whom are senior citizens.

“Those machines were outdated and they were very heavy,” Ebner said. “They were very hard for the election judges to get up on the stands. The Freedom Vote Touchscreens are about half the size, half the weight.”

Then there is cybersecurity. The touchscreen is not connected to the internet and does not store voting data. Tabulated votes are loaded onto a flash drive manually transported to collection centers by two election judges from each precinct.

Ebner did make a key change, however. In previous elections, collection centers transmitted the subtotals by fax line to the clerk’s office in Ottawa for final tabulation. Now, the flash drives with the subtotals will be manually brought to the clerk’s office.

That will add about an hour to the tabulation – “It’s not going to be super-late when we have the unofficial totals on election night,” Ebner said – but that’s the norm among northern Illinois counties. Ebner decided there was merit to following their protocols.

“There’s less risk of something getting corrupted over a line if we don’t use that,” she said. “I want everything safe and secure in La Salle County.”