What questions are volunteers getting at the outreach sessions?What questions are volunteers getting at the outreach sessions?
Q. What questions are volunteers getting at the outreach sessions
A.
Below are questions raised during outreach sessions that were passed along to LWVCT by outreach volunteers. Please send us any questions that were generated during your outreach sessions that you think will be helpful for other volunteers in conducting sessions in their community. LWVCT will post periodic updates based upon your submissions.
Can children accompany a parent to the privacy booth/voting machine?
Children 15 yrs old or
younger by law can accompany parents to the privacy booths. However a voter
may request help in the privacy booth from anyone she wants, within certain
limitations like no employers or union reps. So if a parent requests help from
her/his 18 year old son, that is acceptable. The moderator should write the name
of the person who is the helper in the moderator's log.
Where will Referendum questions appear on the ballot?
The town clerk designs the ballot. For local referenda, town clerks usually put
referendum questions at the top, but that may differ from town to town. If your
town uses 2 pages for your ballot, your questions may continue onto the back of
the ballot and or onto a 2nd sheet--depending on how it's arranged and how many
questions there are. It’s a good idea to encourage voters to check the reverse
side of their ballots at every election or referendum.
What does a full-face ballot mean?
Full-face ballot could be called “a ballot-at-a-glance.” Everything you vote on—candidates and referenda—is on one full page, like on the face of the lever machines. We used to think that Connecticut required a full-face ballot, but the Attorney General ruled that our laws don’t require it. That means we can use 2-page ballots on optical scanners or double-sided ballots with optical scanners.
What is required to be a valid write-in candidate?
Write-in candidates have to be certified by the Secretary of State for a
particular race. The Secretary of State’s office sends the list of certified
write-in candidates to the town clerk. The registrars make sure that every
polling place has a list of write-in candidates available for voters to view at
the polls.
When a scanner rejects a
ballot and voter doesn't understand the reason, may the machine tender look at
the ballot to explain the problem? Some voters might allow this. My questioner
was thinking of the many non- English speakers in our community.
The voter
always should be the one holding, carrying, scanning the ballot. If a ballot is
rejected by the scanner, sometimes it's just a glitch and the display will read
"invalid ballot" or some other rather generic message. The machine tender (not
the ballot clerk) will ask the voter to try it again. Sometimes it just works
the second time. Remember, each time the ballot is inserted and rejected, the
display stays lighted for 12 seconds, giving the machine tender plenty of time
to read or re-read the display to the voter. If the ballot is rejected and the
machine tender sees that the display shows a more specific message
like ”Over-vote in US Senate race", then she/he will ask the voter
to check the column for U.S. Senate to see whether there is an over-vote
there--or a stray mark that makes the machine think that there's an over-vote.
If the machine tender
doesn't speak the language of the voter, that presents a problem. Would there
be another poll worker--able to communicate with the voter-- that could be
called over to explain? This worker would not look at the ballot, but would
explain what the machine is displaying and how the voter could check for the
problem. That would be a better solution than having someone look at the voter's
ballot. Of course, the voter can always get a new ballot if she/he can't find
what the error could be and try again. And, as above, the voter can always ask
for a helper. If everyone’s ballot starts being rejected by the machine for no
obvious reason, then the moderator has to become involved.
Does the ballot clerk
deposit the ballot into the auxiliary bin?
No, the ballot clerk doesn’t
touch the ballot after it's been given to the voter, unless the voter, because
of an error, returns the ballot to the ballot clerk for a new one. The ballot
clerk invalidates the old ballot and places it in an envelope--marked Spoiled
Ballots--provided by the registrars and returned to the registrars.
If the voter has made an
error that makes the machine reject the ballot AND that requires a new ballot,
the voter MIGHT decide that she doesn't have the time to start all over again
filling out a whole new ballot. In this case, the voter may be given the option
of depositing the ballot, as is, into the auxiliary bin. (After all, let's hope
that the voter didn't over-vote in every race. Her other votes would
theoretically be OK.) All those in the auxiliary bin will be hand counted later
or will be counted by the machine later with the officials over-riding the
problematic race. All the other races on the voter's ballot will be counted,
as long as they didn't have any additional over-votes.
8/8/07