Primary election report

Today Illinois is holding its Democratic and Republican primaries.

My wife and I walked to our local polling place, the neighborhood public elementary school, during the late morning.  My wife is taking a day off from work today (originally she expected to be doing fun activities with our kids who are home on spring break; now there are no fun places to go), while I exercised my legal right to walk away from work for a short time in order to vote.

All schools in Illinois have been closed by order of the governor, but it seems the children haven't disappeared: we passed a string of parents (all moms) who clearly were in the process of picking up their kids from the school.  So my conclusion is that school is not in session, but the so-called After School Care (which also operates before school when school is in session) is now running extended hours.  So the kids, some of them anyway, are still are in the school buildings every day. Whether this is a diminished public health risk, I can't say.  Probably the arrangement is putting the teachers at lower risk (as they are not at school during these Coronavirus days) but the After School Care watchers are at higher risk (because they are spending more time in the school with the kids).

Anyway, back to election matters.  The precinct voting area, which is in the school gym, was more bustling than usual, because the voting center for a neighboring precinct had been moved into our gym space.  Local news orgs had been reporting for the last week or so that this sort of thing would be done to help contain the virus.  The neighboring precinct is one of those retirement communities with a mixture of independent-living duplexes, semi-independent-living condos, and full-blown nursing care.  Consequently, senior citizens who might otherwise have voted in their same building or a short walk away, now needed to walk a half-mile or more, or drive or catch a ride with someone. I guess the idea is that, by relocating the precinct voting off-campus, the election judges wouldn't be bringing the Coronavirus into the senior center.  But if the same election judges are interacting with the same voters in a different setting, is the risk substantially diminished?  Especially when they are in the same room with a group of voters (from my precinct) from whom they would normally be isolated?  I confess that I'm not seeing the logic.

The election judge who helped me sign in told me that some election judges hadn't shown up.  This has been feared for a few days now; many election judges are seniors.  But he said they had three who showed up, and that was enough to keep things moving along.

There was no Purell or Clorox wipes or anything of the sort to be seen, either at the sign-in station or the voting booths.  I chose to vote electronically.  I was handed a ballot shield which I had seen another voter drop onto the table seconds before.  A ballot shield is is a big piece of flimsy cardboard used to prevent others from seeing the printout of my electronic ballot after I print it on a laser printer and walk it over to an electronic device which sucks it into a locked bin.  But the point is not what a ballot shield is; the point is that there was no disinfecting going on - I was touching something that a stranger had just touched.  The electronic voting machine itself is a touchscreen affair; there was no provision for wiping the screen before or after I had pressed my finger all over it to complete my voting.

The Republican ballot was pretty sparse.  I maintained my perfect record of never having voted for Donald Trump.  He did have an opponent on the Republican ballot, I fellow by the name of de la Fuentes of whom I had never previously heard.  I wrote in the name of one of my friends instead.

There are four or five Senate candidates, none of whom has a prayer of coming within 20 points in the fall election against veteran Democratic incumbent Dick Durbin.  I voted for the guy whom our local newspapers endorsed.

I'm in a reliably Democratic US Congressional district (gerrymandered to be reliable); there was one Republican on the ballot to run against the Democratic incumbent in the fall, but neither newspaper we receive at home had endorsed him, so I wrote in another friend's name.

One of the more closely-watched races in this area is for Cook County State's Attorney (Illinois calls its public prosecutors State's Attorneys).  The incumbent, Kim Foxx, has received reams and reams of unfavorable publicity for bungling the prosecution of Jussie Smollett, the actor from the television show Empire who tried to pass off a staged racially-motivated attack as real.  There were two Republicans on the ballot today to run in the fall against her or whoever ousts her in today's Democratic primary.  Of the two Republicans, one (with an Irish surname) was endorsed by one newspaper, while the other (with a German surname) was endorsed by the other.  I went with the Irish guy.

There was a Water Reclamation District race in which we were to choose no more than three candidates, but the GOP couldn't be bothered to run even one in the primary.   I was starting to run out of the names of friends whose names I could write in.

There were a dozen or more more judicial races on the ballot, from the State Supreme Court all the way down to races to fill Circuit Court vacancies. There was only one race in which the Republicans managed to field a candidate - and in that race they fielded two, who were running against one another.

As I walked home, wondering why the GOP can't find people to run in any races, I enjoyed that mildly virtuous feeling one gets when one clears the low bar of exercising this most basic of civic duties.  Then, when I got home, I washed my hands thoroughly.