As Cardinal Fans, we still love this

Our daughter spent the last week before the election helping campaign in New Hampshire. She brought back the best campaign sign ever. Hopefully she will send us one back here in Illinois. You can see it by visiting here. Thanks for the opportunity to have been a part of your election 2004 citizen team.

Illinois Supreme Court Justice race the biggest news

In the category of “no news” was the Barak Obama win for U.S. Senate. This was never a contest and I hope that he will do good things for this state, we need a voice. Fizgerald was too much of an iconoclast for most of us and Durbin is more for personal face time on any camera that he sees.

But, Lloyd Karmeier defeated Democrat Gordon Maag in the fiercely contested race for Illinois Supreme court justice. No one should underestimate the explosion of this result. Karmeier’s win makes this the first time in history a republican has ever been elected from the Southern Illinois region to the Supreme Court. And it is the first time anyone living outside the democratic hotbed counties of Madison and St. Clair has won. An unbelieveable turn of events which was aided in large part by the mobilization of almost all doctors, nurses and other medical workers in this part of the state. Losing almost 170 doctors because the two counties are ground zero in lawsuit abuse was a major factor. Maag was supported with millions of dollars by trial lawyers while Karmeier received millions from doctors, tort reform people and business associations. Maag appears to also be losing his attempt to retain his present seat as an appellate court judge. He was on the ballot twice and is not getting the 60 per cent necessary to be retained. This is major news here.

Chicago 'burbs

The voting (and counting here) are finished. Now the wait to find out the actual results.
The day went well here at the poll station. There were only a few minor incidents in an otherwise boringly straightforward national vote. Small problems like moving out of the area and still wanting to vote here, bringing in a prepunched ballot, and a ballot not machine readable (it was an indecipherable judicial retention, not an election vote).
The most interesting part were the 4 foreign observers.

They had official Cook County Election Supervisor credentials.
If they wanted to have any chance of finding fraud, they would have been in one of the low income polling places in Chicago. As one of them was from Peru, a hispanic neighborhood should have been a “slam dunk”, but they got sent to a “white-bread” middle class WASP neighborhood instead. I am not sure if they were just diverted to somewhere harmless, or they were here on a high class junket. We gave them some of the unreuseable signage to take back as souveniers (one of them helped himself to some of the re-useable stuff aas well, but that is another story).
Out of 595 registered votors, we had about 10% identified as no longer residents and about 450 ballots cast including provisionals ( but not military as they have more time to come in and weren’t included in our counts even if they were part of our registered voter numbers.
I am off to the Rebublican victory party to see the rest of the returns and will try to get reactions from there.

Interesting and surprising

We closed our poll and then set to work on the election judge duties no one ever sees. The only experience I have to compare the fatigue of a 15 hour precinct day to would be driving to Florida non stop. We had 522 voters out of a total of approximately 675. This is almost twice the number of voters we had in 2000.

Our precinct in Collinsville/Madison County is hugely democratic. All day we had poll watchers and party runners in and out checking their lists. But even so, Bush did very well. I was fairly shocked. Kerry won our precinct, but both he and Bush were in the 200’s in vote count. The major race in Southern Illinois is the Supreme Court Justice race between Republican Lloyd Karmeier and Democrat Gordon Maag. Maag, not surprisingly received the highest vote count, but Karmeier was not far behind. This was the race our democratic guys went all out for and it was close in spite of that. Amazing really.

The other race which surprised me was John Shimkus ® v Bagwell (D) for U.S. Congress. Bagwell received more votes than I ever would have expected. Shimkus is very well liked here and Bagwell did not campaign much. I am heading to the Shimkus election night party and will report more after.

Lloyd Karmeier Looking Good

22% of precincts are reporting in, and with 56% of the vote, it looks like Lloyd Karmeier ® will win the Southern Illinois seat of the Illinois Supreme Court.

Obama (D) wins IL Senate Race, defeats Keyes

Chicago Tribune

The Trib undoubtedly had this written a week ago. The only question is whether Obama will set a record for the most lopsided victory in U.S. Senate history.

CNN: Obama Wins Senate In Il

CNN reports that Barak Obama is heading to the US Senate.

Republicans being stripped off the voter rolls in Chicago?

Blogger Blackfive was denied his vote on North McClurg Court in Chicago, and he’s not happy about it, nor are any of the others.

The two books containing voter registration and voter signatures were considerably smaller than before. In the past, the voter books were about five inches thick, and now they were about 1/4 of their usual size.

. The guy next to me was screaming about “Fraud!”. There were four ladies who were crying. Another guy was yelling about his rights. The election judges were freaking out.

As I left on my way to the County Election Commission to file a complaint, I asked ten different people who were also denied a vote because they weren’t in the book, “Are you Republicans?”

All ten replied, “Yes.”

After three and a half hours of feuding with officials, Blackfive was finally allowed to vote by provisional ballot. Welcome to Illinois.

The News from Southern Illinois

Just back from the polls here in Williamson County, things are slow here in small towns on a frigid day, but as Diane noted, we do have the Keyes/Obama race on. Although we know how it will end, it will be interesting to see where Keyes gets support from after the Jack Ryan debacle.

Also notable is the Karmeier/Maag race for State Supreme Court. Gordon Maag, a trial lawyer by trade, is considered by some to be partly responsible for the medical malpractice situation in Southern Illinois, one which widely roots in the Metro East judicial system, rated as one of the worst jurisdictions in America. His Republican opponent, Lloyd Karmeier, is a strong advocate of tort reform. An interesting quirk of this race is that Maag is running both to retain his old judicial seat and to win his new Supreme Court seat. This gave me, and other Southern Illinoisans, the unique opportunity to vote against him twice.

Also notable in my district is the State Senate race between appointed incumbent Gary Forby (D) and challenger Ron Summers ®, which has been a hotly contested battle waged with a great deal of negative campaigning. The attacks on Forby mainly consist of explaining the connections between him and our current governor, Rod Blagojevich (D-Chicago), widely reviled in Southern Illinois, while attacks on Summers attempt to attach Summers to our previous corrupt Republican governor, George Ryan.

Also in my district is our US Congressional race between longtime incumbent Jerry Costello (D-Belleville) and 28-year old challenger Erin Zweigart (D-Evansville). Our district (in a badly gerrymandered state) stretches from deep Southern Illinois up and across the Metro East. Ironically, while Zweigart opposes Costello’s Chicago stylings and collusion with the Governor, the Chicago Tribune has endorsed Zweigart, while local newspaper The Southern Illinois has endorsed Costello. Costello, as the longtime incumbent, is expected to win handily, but it’s been exciting.

Southern Illinois is widely considered a red zone in a blue state, so there are some strange dynamics at work. Most Southern Illinois voters tend to be “Zell Miller-style” Jacksonian/”Southern” Democrats, with conservative social values but liberal economic attitudes, which often leaves them deeply torn between voting for the “New” far-left Democrats like Rod Blagojevich and John Kerry, or caving in to vote Republican. It’s gonna be a fun night.

Chicago 'burbs

Everything clean in this small precinct. Wireless doesn’t reach, so I am out on a quick break.
over half so far, but probably 10% are no longer residents here on the lists. No serious irregularities, normal stuff like lost names from the list and so forth. Good to hear that the possible foriegn problems have not occured.
Go vote

Illinois -- First Report

A drizzling rain failed to dampen turnout at the polls, at least in my Illinois County. My polling place was filling up fast at 7:30 this morning. I’m hearing anecdotal reports from friends and acquaintances around the state that lines are longer than they’ve ever seen.

A word to Illinois voters re: write-in candidates. Note that write-in votes in Illinois are only counted for candidates who have filed a declaration of intent to be a write in candidate. The only write-in candidate I’m personally aware of is Mark Kuhnke, who is seeking to provide an alternative to Illinois voters dissatisfied with the choice between Alan Keyes ® and Barrack Obama (D). (Don’t construe this as an endorsement, by me or TCP, of any of these guys).

Although Illinois is a very safe state for Kerry and Obama, the mechanics of voting are still interesting. Here, as in most states, voters are not asked for ID at the polls. They are asked, however, to sign a card, which the election judge then compares against the signature on file from your registration. This is a very reliable system, as the state of Illinois goes to great expense to staff each polling place with handwriting experts and forensic document examiners who can render an immediate judgment on whether or not the signatures match.

Oh wait, no they don’t.

Related post at TheSpoonsExperience.

We're voting

We poll judges arrived at our precinct at 5 a.m. and got all documentation set out, the ballot tabulator turned on and inspected. The voters started lining up about 5:45. We have been busy, but not overwhelmingly so.

We have also had campaign sign problems for the first time that I can remember. Another judge and I marked out 100 feet from the precinct, put out the orange cones to mark the distance. There were a couple of campaign signs in the ground beyond 100 feet which is legal. After 45 minutes of voting we noticed those signs were destroyed, smashed, and a few opponent signs put in their place, but at a spot less than 100 feet. So we removed the offenders and are in process of calling the county clerk’s office because this is probably going on all over the area. Never happened since I have been working elections.

Chicago 'burbs

I just drove over to the polling place and gave it the once over. Three cars outside with ( I presume) waiting votors patiently awaiting something. It is open after all. I tried out the new (borrowed) wireless antenna, but it barely reaches with the laptop card I have. I suspect it will not reach inside the school gym later.
Smart money has Keyes suffering a loss of biblical proportions as white votors refuse to support reparations and black votors vote for Daley’s Choice. Phil Crane has a real fight here as he hasn’t had in quite a few years and he definately hasn’t been as visible as Bean has become by way of expensive Chicago TV ads.

The cars outside must be car pooling or something. Not excessively long lines inside either precinct’s tables.
Wireless doesn’t reach inside, and everybody looked at me like I was bringing Hugh Heffner and a film crew into their bedroom for having a laptop with me. Maybe it will be less hostile in a couple of hours when my shift starts as a poll watcher.
Later

Illinois' gone local

Illinois isn’t of much interest to the rest of the country as far as the major federal offices go. Barak Obama will surely defeat Alan Keyes and both political parties have given the state to John Kerry long ago. So we find ourselves sneaking peeks at the television when someone mentions Ohio or Wisconsin. One of our daughters is campaign volunteering in New Hampshire for a few days so we stop and listen to how things are going there. Tonight we had Special Report with Britt Hume on when we were thinking about dinner. As I was slicing up a red onion Dale said “you know, we could discuss these issues as well as any of the experts on these panels. They don’t know anymore than anyone else what’s what tonight.”

So I said, “Yep,” and went out into the dark to grill hamburgers in the rain.

In any event, it seems as if the less important we are presidentially, the more crazed the local races have become here in Illinois. There are some close close congressional battles around the state. But the race which has galvanized nearly everyone in the state is the race for the Southern region Illinois Supreme Court Justice. A new U.S. record for spending has been set as the two men have gone through millions and millions of dollars. No one can ever remember a judgeship causing this much hoopla. It has become the trial lawyers versus the tort reform people and it will be worth waiting up for tomorrow night.

Precinct is ready to go

I am an election judge in the part of Southern Illinois better known as St. Louis Metro-East. Another judge and I spent part of the day setting up as much of our precinct as we could. We set up the registration tables, the voting booths, chairs for voters to sit on while they wait, and tables for poll watchers. Everything is in order. Tomorrow morning we will unlock the ballot tabulator, a computerized ballot box and remove all election supplies and documents. Getting the room in order today is a big help. I put three rather shaky photos up on my blog which can be found here.