TOP 10 ELECTION FAQs

Q1: Does McHenry County use paper ballots?  
A: Yes. Every ballot cast, whether during early voting, Election Day, or Vote by Mail (VBM) is cast on paper. Your vote is cast in one of two ways.

1. Using a pen, you mark the ovals on the ballot to indicate your choices, or
2. Using an ExpressVote, touchscreen ballot marking Device (BMD) you tap the screen to indicate your choices. Then the device prints the ballot showing the results of your choices that you had made on the screen.

In either case, you will take that ballot to another machine called a tabulator. The tabulator scans the ballot, looks for errors (i.e. voted for too many candidates in a race), and stores them in a secure bin in the lower part of the device.

Q2: What measures do you take to keep our elections secure? 
A: We go to great lengths to ensure safe, secure, and fair elections. Here are just a few of the things we do to keep your votes safe:

• We make use of thousands of tamper-proof/tamper-evident numbered seals in several sizes, colors, and functions, throughout our election operations. These help us to identify equipment and supplies and also can indicate if tampering has occurred.
• None of the equipment that counts ballots ever connects to the internet, nor does it have the capability to connect to the internet. There has been a lot of concern about the possibility that outside forces could “hack” into our ballot-counting equipment. Any hardware that could have facilitated that connection has been removed.
• We repeatedly test the equipment and our programming. One of the ways we do that is with something called a “test deck”. The test deck is a collection of ballots that we prepare to reflect at least one positive entry for every possible candidate/public question option. It also tests for:
  • Overvotes: When a voter chooses more than the allotted amount of choices for a particular race or question (i.e. filling in the bubble for both candidates for President)
  • Undervotes: When a voter chooses fewer options than they are allowed for a particular race/question (i.e. not voting at all in a particular race/question, or, in a race where you can choose up to x number of candidates but choose a number fewer than x).
  • Blank ballots: While you are well within your rights to cast a completely empty ballot, it is not typical and thus the tabulator will alert you when that happens. You are then given the opportunity to take the ballot back or continue to cast the blank ballot.

Q3: Do I have to show ID to vote? 
A: No. However, showing a state-issued ID or Driver’s License to the Election Judge will likely make the process go more quickly.

Q4: How do I know vote-by-mail (VBM, which also includes ballots placed in dropboxes) is secure?  
A: McHenry County takes great pains to ensure that the VBM process is safe, secure, and fair. Here are just a few of the things we do to accomplish that:

• Application Security: Literally anyone can send you a VBM ballot request application. But, in McHenry County, we will only accept a request that has a signature on it that matches your signature on file.
• Ballot package security: If your signature on the application matches your signature on file, we will prepare a ballot package for you that consists of the following:
  • Outbound envelope: This is the outer envelope that has your address on it that carries the package to your home. It also has specific markings to indicate to the post office that it is high-priority election mail.
  • Ballot: This is a ballot identical to the one that you would find if you came to a polling place on election day. Fill it in using a black or dark blue pen.
  • Instruction sheet: This sheet gives the voter instructions about how to complete the ballot and return it.
  • Certification Envelope: This envelope is very important. The front will have your name and address on it as well as some other information important to the Clerk’s Office that (among other things) identifies that this belongs to you. There is a spot for you to sign to attest that you are the person shown on the envelope and that you can legally vote.Put the completed ballot in this envelope and seal it.
  • Return envelope: This is the envelope that will contain your sealed certification envelope which should contain your completed ballot. This envelope has our address preprinted on the front along with special markings to let the Post Office know that this is important Election Mail. Many jurisdictions do not include this envelope, and just have you send the certification envelope back. This leaves your personal information (including your signature) exposed. McHenry County includes this exterior envelope to shield your personal information and to further physically protect your certification envelope and ballot.
• Ballot Package Validation Process: When you return your ballot package, we go through several steps to ensure that the package is valid and eligible for tabulation. The ballot packages are kept in one room until they are validated, invalidated, and/or set aside for a voter to resolve a dispute.
  • Outer return envelope removal: The outer envelope is removed either manually or by machine revealing the sealed certification envelope inside.
  • Certification Envelope Qualification: Our mail sorter measures the certification envelope and checks its dimensions (height, width, thickness) against our specifications, and rejects those outside of specifications. This protects against the return of multiple ballots in one envelope, or an attempt to duplicate an envelope in order to send more than one ballot in. There are other protections that would reject the second appearance of a ballot as well.
  • First Scan: Our mail sorting machine scans the front of the certification envelope picking up critical marks that identify you and this particular ballot package. The full image of the front of the envelope is stored as is the section that contains the signature box. The signature box is queued up for our signature verification (SigVer) team.
  • Signature Verification (SigVer): A team of election judges from both parties review the signature blocks captured by the mail sorter and compare that to the signatures on file. The judges indicate whether the signature matches (or doesn’t, or is absent, etc.) in the system. This disposition is fed back to the mail sorter. The voter is marked as ineligible to vote in person or to request another VBM ballot at this point.
  • Second Scan and Dispositive Sorting: Once SigVer is completed, the certification envelopes are passed through the sorter again. This time, envelopes that failed SigVer will be rejected into categories related to their rejection reason and notification will be sent to voters to inform them of the issue with their ballot. The envelopes that pass SigVer will have their envelope opened and will be sorted into township groupings.
  • Ballot Extraction and Tabulation Prep: Election Judges remove the ballots from the certification envelopes and prepare them in bundles of a specific number. Bundles are placed in boxes, sealed with a numbered seal and a label that indicates the number of ballots inside and who packaged them. The boxes are set aside until they are sent through one of our high-speed tabulators

Q5: Does it matter if someone fills out their ballot with a Sharpie marker?  
A: No. Sharpies can indeed bleed through ballot paper. But, the layout of the ballot is done in such a way that the ovals you fill in on this side won’t line up with the ovals on the opposite side. You should use a black or dark blue pen (or a Sharpie) to fill in the ovals completely on your ballot.

Q6: (Vote by mail) Couldn’t someone just make copies of their ballot, send them in, and get them counted?  
A: No. VBM ballots are only counted once the certification envelope they arrived in has been validated. Ballots with no certification envelopes or with copies of previously used certification envelopes are automatically identified and will not be tabulated.

Q7: Couldn’t I vote by mail and then vote in person (or vice versa)?  
A: No. There are three scenarios driven by the order in which the actions are taken that illustrate how this is prevented.

• You requested a VBM ballot and then showed up to vote in person (VBM ballot is not returned): When you arrived to vote in person, the Judge would see that you have a VBM ballot outstanding. You would be given an opportunity to vote provisionally. We would hold that provisional ballot until 14 days after election day. If your VBM ballot had been returned, the provisional ballot would not be tabulated. If the VBM ballot was not returned, the provisional in-person ballot would be tabulated.
• You requested a VBM ballot and then showed up to vote in person (VBM ballot is returned): The judge would inform you that we had received your VBM ballot. If you insist that you did not do VBM, we will process a provisional ballot and investigate.
• You request a VBM ballot after having voted in person: Your request would be rejected on the basis that you had already voted in person.

Q8; Are election machines connected to the internet?  
A: Machines that count your votes are not connected to the internet in McHenry County. There are other devices in polling places that must be connected to the internet. These are called “poll books”, and they must be connected to the internet to facilitate checking the eligibility of voters to vote. During Early Voting, anyone can vote at any of our polling places, therefore, the poll books at these different locations must be able to share information to prevent someone from voting in one place and then driving across town and voting in another place. Poll books do not connect to either the tabulators or ballot marking devices, and have no information as to how you voted.

Q9: Why don’t we hand-count ballots?   
A: Hand-counting ballots in a county the size of ours is impractical to the point of impossibility. For example, if we were to hand-count the 2022 election, it would cost approximately an additional $841,000 and would require roughly 1,500 to 2,000 Election judges, and facilities to house all those people, the ballots, materials, etc. Those election judges would have to work 7 days a week, 7 hours a day, for three weeks straight to count all the votes in all the races/questions in the time allotted to report the final results. This is based on a hand-counted audit that we performed on July 7^th, 2022. A report on the audit complete with results and artifacts from the audit can be found on the County Clerk’s website.

Q10: What is “ranked choice voting” (RCV)?   
A: RCV is an alternative way to vote and tabulate elections and can be implemented in a number of different ways. In traditional elections (sometimes called a “Plurality” system), voters will cast one vote for each of their preference(s). If candidate A has one more vote than candidate B or C, then candidate A wins.

Voting in RCV: With RCV, the voter would rank the candidates when they vote. In the case of a race between three candidates (A, B, and C), the voter would rank one of them as their first choice, another as their second choice, and so on.

Tabulating RCV: This is where it gets complicated, and there are some different variations. Here’s a popular one. Again, let’s imagine a race for Mayor with three candidates. Let’s say when we tabulate the voter’s first choice votes, no one achieves a majority (50+%). In that case, the candidate with the lowest percentage would be removed from the race, and the people who voted for that candidate as their first choice would have their second choice candidates added to the count for the other two candidates. At that point, there should be one candidate with more than 50% (unless there’s a tie) and that person would win. If there were more than 3 candidates, more rounds of elimination may be required to arrive at a majority (50+%) winner.

Is RCV a “good” thing?: In areas where runoff elections are common, RCV could eliminate those runoff elections. However, most Illinois jurisdictions do not utilize runoff elections. So, many Clerks and Election Authorities are not in favor of implementing RCV. Furthermore, the typical method of voting and tabulation is widely understood across ages, languages, and cultures… everybody gets one vote and the candidate with the most votes wins. RCV further complicates election setup, pre-election testing, and tabulating across jurisdictions, and would make election-night results slower, to impossible or perhaps even meaningless. There would need to be an extensive (and expensive) voter education program and ultimately some may still not understand. This could lead them to vote incorrectly, or, being frustrated at its complexity, not vote at all. Voting your ballot would take longer, likely making lines longer at polling places and/or requiring more election judges to facilitate the election, especially on election day.