Tuesday, February 5, 2008

* First Hand Account of the "Magic Pen"

Amy, one of the 15 plus "magic pen" users, has left a first hand account of the magic pen story. Fagus, you've got some explaining to do.

10 comments:

Levois said...

Or does Fagus know how to either explain his ineptitude or does he even know things didn't go very well? Hmm!

been there said...

oh no! this would have been my polling place, but i couldn't work. my republican/gordon partner must not have worked, either.
all i can say is that anyone who has never worked as a judge should do it sometime. it isn't as easy as it looks. these must have been first time judges. they did pound into us that you had to use the high carbon fine point markers. we were joking about them being magic pens, so that was an obvious joke. this would be the third election with the same pans, so i am not surprised that they had dried up by now. i suppose when they counted out the supplies they didn't check them.
at least they made an effort to contact and these voters and get them back. oy.

INKJAR said...

BRINGING BACK MEMORIES OF THE 49TH ALDERMATIC ELECTION-

Hugh said...

Sun-Times coverage of the 49th ward's magic pens

Voters are told pen had 'invisible ink'

Hugh said...

Tribune coverage of the 49th ward's magic pens

Election officials probe use of 'magic' invisible ink pens in 49th Ward

been there said...

russell varner, if you are out there, this is YOUR fault. i know this means that you did not work the poll. lol
i had a good excuse, did you?

Craig Gernhardt said...

We already know Fagus and his clan of election judges are incompetent. I've been telling my readers that for years.

Blame here should be placed squarely on the idiot voters who believed the 'Magic Pen' story in the first place.

Those 20 voters made the entire 49th ward look like a bunch of fools. Like I said yesterday, their voting rights should be taken away.

been there said...

craig, fagus has damn little to do with poll workers. the boe hires most of them. anyone that is worth a hoot is discouraged from working as a judge, and encouraged to work gotv instead. i know you believe otherwise, but most poll workers are ordinary citizens trying to keep watch on their democracy as they should. you don't usually get the best and the brightest, it is true. but many are patriots of the first order. your constant attacks on their character, of all your targets, is just deplorable.
like i said in my previous post, if you have never done it, you don't really have room to criticize. i am betting that everyone in that polling place was a first time judge. there is a huge amount of stuff you have to learn in a 3 hour training, and with those stupid machines on top of it, it is just more than any human is going to be able to handle the first time through.
amy seems pretty young. maybe this was her first election, or second, or so. that is a lot to absorb, also. (although i do confess to a slight agreement with you when i hear some of the stupid voter suppression tactics that actually work on some people. in the end, we do all have to take our responsibility to know our rights or lose them.) it would be nice is everyone knew everything they were supposed to know. but like the jury system, it is designed to fall on regular folks. that is the way it should be, but the occasional snafu is the unavoidable price.
but seriously craig, i challenge you to do it yourself in november. it is a great experience, and i promise you will not see things the same way.

DorothyParker007 said...

Well I was a poll watcher and we didnt have any magic pens, but we did have magic voters, we had Elvis, Mayor Washington..now does that make me stupid? I'll blame it on Amy,cause I want to be like you Craigy.

Chris said...

I worked as a judge in the 50th on Tuesday. Instructions are very clearly written on the ballots- even if a judge were to be confused about what pen to use, a voter could very clearly refer to the ballot and see "INK PEN" required.

If there was an issue, BOE hotline should have been called immediately. The people answering the phones there were absolutely amazing. They would've called a judge's bullshit on "magic ink" in seconds.

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