Great Moments in Voting

Special Report had two stories about voters who just don't seem to get it:

This Magic Moment

Chicago has a rich history of election-day shenanigans — but what happened Tuesday may be near the top of the list. Twenty voters in Chicago's 49th ward were told that the pens they were given — the kind used for touch-screen voting — were filled with magic invisible ink to mark their paper ballots.

City election board spokesman James Allen tells FOX News — poll workers may have actually believed that the styluses they somehow ended up handing out were really inkless pens that would mark paper ballots that could be seen by scanning machines.

When the scanners rejected the ballots, the judges overrode them and processed the ballots with no votes. One voter said the poll workers insisted they had been trained in the use of the magic pens. Eventually election officials tried to contact the 20 voters to get them to come back and fill out real ballots.

Allen says "Your first reaction is ... is this a joke? Some odd things are going to happen ... We always are surprised... This is one that no one could have predicted."

Timing Is Everything

Turnout was a big factor on Super Tuesday. Voters in Virginia deluged the Board of Elections with phone calls — and turned up at several polling places — even though their primary does not take place until next week.

In Wisconsin — a woman told a local radio station that she and six-to-10 other people were standing outside a polling place about 6:30 in the morning waiting to vote. Wisconsin's primary takes place in two weeks.

And in Florida — state officials fielded hundreds of phone calls from voters wanting to know where they could vote. Florida's primary was last week.

Another example could be found at Best of the Web Today:

Milwaukee's WTMJ-AM quotes Ethel Goodwin, who arose early yesterday and tuned in to the station: "We were listening to the news and they were saying that Super Tuesday, and all the state, I figured that included Wisconsin," she said. When she showed up at her local polling place, "there were about six to 10 other people standing outside waiting to go in, also, at 6:30 [a.m.]." Wisconsin's primary actually is Feb. 19.

I'm beginning to think that turn-out-the-vote efforts are not doing us any favors. It encourages the dummies to turn out and vote, and do we really want them involved in the process?