Prepare!
First, it involves homework.
It’s not just the President who is up for election, but a whole gamut of public officials from the State Attorney to the State Senators, the Clerk of the Circuit Court to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
“Wait- what now?” I hear you say. “The Metropolitan Water- is that even a title??”
Well exactly.
In principal voting for public offices sounds like a good democratic concept. But in practice it turns out to be a mess.
And that brings up a really interesting questions about the difference between how we think democracy ought to work in theory, and the consequences of what ordinary people do in practice.
Which happens to be the core question we explore in the podcast What Democracy Looks Like In…!
And it’s perfectly encapsulated in this ballot, because there are a lot of judges in Illinois and when you go to vote you are, in theory, making informed decisions on each of them. Various non-partizan organizations collate information which allows you to do research on each judge and come to a decision.
Wanting to be a good citizen, I’ve come to rely on the labor of Stephanie Skora and Raeghn Draper and their amazing Girl, I Guess? A Progressive Voter Guide to the 2024 General Election in Cook County and Beyond.
Here is a photo of me printing their guide before I went to vote. The pliers are because our 20 year old printer gets stuck if you try and print more than one piece of paper at a time and there were SO MANY DAMN JUDGES our printer revolted.
When to vote
I was voting early because election day is not a national holiday in the US and, in comparison to some of the countries covered in the podcast, employers in the US are under no obligation to give employees time off to vote.
I work for two companies, and while one is closing for the election, the other isn't and it's my bad luck that I work in the latter on Tuesdays. So I'm opting for early voting this year.
I rocked up mid-morning on a Sunday and there were a few people there ahead of me, but no real bustle.
I vote in a Chicago suburb, and here we have one polling location open for early voting but several different places on voting day itself.
There are a few political placards places on the road before the location but I believe there are rules about how close they are allowed to get.
Interestingly, a Democrat volunteer was standing near the entrance handing out leaflet guides similar to the Girl, I Guess list I’d brought with me.
Checking my eligibility to vote
Once inside I encountered a table where volunteers were sitting behind small machines that scanned the paper voter registration card I’d brought with me.
When I voted in the UK years ago, I didn’t have to present any ID at all, but in our UK episode John explained that the more reactionary part of the Conservative government in the UK were pushing for similarly exclusionary voter-ID policies there.
Every country I’ve talked about on the podcast has a list of registered voters, however, but they differ in how difficult it is to get on and stay on that list.
Unlike countries like North Korea, voters in the US are not automatically registered to vote. I’ve changed address since the last election so I had to remember to go update my voter registration online to get my voter ID. If I hadn’t and I’d wanted to vote on election day itself, I would’ve had to go back to my old voter Polling Place.
Because I was doing early voting, however, it didn't matter because there is only one polling place.
The volunteers had me e-sign the screen verifying that my information was correct. Then they gave me a paper receipt printed by the machine that was presumably tied to my voter ID, along with a blank white plastic card similar in size to a credit card.
I was also given a large floppy “privacy screen” for use later one when I carried my completed ballot across the room.
Voting itself feels like a tedious exam
With these in hand, I was directed into a separate room where the voting machines were located.
Each machine is set up at its own table, with a folding screen around it to give you privacy from the person next to you. This time I had a chair, thank goodness – remember all those judges! I was going to be here a while!
The voting machine itself is a touch screen, with an ordinary looking HP printer set up next to it. You insert the little white blank credit card thing to turn it on, then start working your way through all the questions.
And boy, does it take a long time.
Below is a photo of my half way through my list of judges. My Girl, I Guess guide doesn’t match perfectly what is on the screen. Obviously! It’s not like anyone gets a preview of the ballot ahead of time. As much as this feels like going for an exam, there isn’t a practice test you can take ahead of time.
So instead I’m going backwards and forwards, comparing each name and title to what I’ve got written on my paper.
Hang on, am I looking for an Court Clerk or the Clerk of the Circuit Court here? What happened to the Cook County Commissioner? Where did the State’s Attorney go? Oh lord, here come all the judges!
Yes, No, Yes, Yes, No, Yes....
Listen.
I strongly believe that a functioning democracy requires a judicial system where Judges are qualified and not-corrupt.
But this does not feel like a sensible way to ensure qualified and not-corrupt people are appointed to these positions.
Feeding your ballot into the scanner-that-is-definitely-not-a-dumpster
After I’ve finally made my way through all those choices, I hit done and the HP Printer that looks unnervingly similar to the one I have back home prints out a written summery of all my choices.
At the top of the paper there is a QR code, and information referring to the Precinct where I votes and the style of voting machine. Also a small box that is initialed by the election official, after I carry my paper vote (now covered by the floppy laminated privacy screen I’d been given) up to the end of the room.
I then inset the ballot myself into a scanner attached to what looks like a black dumpster.
I find this quite hilarious.
The machine scans the ballot, drops the paper copy into its dumpster container, and a little screen displays a cheery tick image.
“Look, your ballot has been recorded!” the election worker says. “Congratulations!”
With that, I collect a “I Voted!” sticker, and I’m done.
What democracy feels like
I walk out of the polling station into a crisp, bright, Midwestern Fall day. The sun is shining, the sky a clear blue. The trees in the park across from me are gorgeous yellows and reds. Leaves float over the parking lot as I walk back to my car.
I feel like I did as a kid leaving Mass on a Sunday morning. The sense of everyone being let free out into the world together, our duty done. People beaming at each other as we go our separate ways. All that’s missing are the bells.
I post a selfie on social media of myself wearing my “I Voted!” sticker, and I do actually feel a little glow. The sticker thing – it’s a ritual I like, to be honest.
Despite everything, there is something joyful and wholesome about this brief period of time between the act of voting and results being announced.
Even if your vote doesn’t count, you cast it. You did your bit.
That’s why I’m always a little sad when I can’t vote on election day itself. There is a camaraderie that is difficult to describe without sounding sentimental.
The theater of voting and democracy
What I’d like to highlight for future discussion on the podcast are the points in this process where the security of the vote is emphasized to the voter.
In the podcast we talk a lot about the contrast between trust in the election process, as represented by a belief that the election process itself is secure; and trust in democracy as a way of organizing civil society, which means that you believe the people you elect will actually do the job of making daily life easier for you, once they are in office.
In what I've described above, trust in the election process is being built through objects and acts such as the tick box on the screen as the ballot is scanned, which the election worker makes sure to point out.
The different ways privacy is emphasized, even though in practice I could’ve easily seen what the person next to me was doing if I’d turned my head (I didn’t, obviously).
Less obviously, trust in the process is secured or undermined by access to voting.
In my Chicago suburb, voting as quick and easy. I drove up and was done in less than an hour.That’s absolutely not the case for people elsewhere in the US, who might wait in line as long as 10 hours if past experience is anything to go by.
Would you be surprised to learn that it takes longer to vote in poorer neighborhoods?
Our awareness that there is a contrast between the experiences of rich and poor voters, Black and White neighborhoods, and across different states, impacts our trust in the system too.
And then there is the issue of all those judges.
I want to get into this in a separate post, and hopefully with a guest in a podcast episode on the US (coming soon!).
But I think this gets to the very concept of what we consider voting and democracy to be for, fundamentally.
Democracy is a way of collectively making decisions for the good of everyone: a way of organizing resources (e.g. water, money) and holding each other accountable (i.e. through laws and journalism).
We give certain people positions in order to get certain jobs done, understanding that holding certain jobs mean having both a responsibility to do the work and a certain amount of power.
In most countries, people work up a career ladder and get appointed to civil positions from within the civil service. They are promoted, we hope, by other experts in their field. And we assume, rightly or wrongly, that there are HR departments and citizens’ complaints organizations, or at least journalists, who can hold civil servants to account.
When I use the crib sheet from Girl I Guess, I’m outsourcing my research to someone I hope has the expertise to do the job better than I can. It feels like a rather pathetic version of what citizens of other countries do: outsourcing the decision to experts.
Which begs the question: Why couldn't we just have done that all along?
The answer to that, I suspect, gets to the very heart of what democracy means in the USA.
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