Voting in Chicago ...or: the republican who sketched my portrait in a church basement

So I went to vote this morning and was a bit disappointed when I saw there were no "I voted" stickers being handed out. How can I smugly broadcast my civic participation and cast judgement on others without these modern-day scarlet letters?!

I did, however, receive two ballots to fill out*, so I guess that extra voting power makes up for no stickers.

The ballots in my precinct aren't electronic yet, but they are odd to me. It's a scan-tron of sorts. For each candidate there is a broken arrow pointing to their name. Like this:
<-------
You are given a black marker and bridge the arrows of your favored candidates. Like this:
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The arrows of unfavorable candidates remain unfixed and broken.
I know: this is hardly remarkable.

My polling place is in the basement of an old stone and cement Catholic church named for Saint Ita. Saint Ita died when a beetle devoured her side and grew to the size of a pig.
It has a ring to it?
The bells in the tower of Saint Ita have long-been replaced by innocuous-looking loudspeakers, poking out from behind the lace-fine Gothic stonework. Now pre-recorded ringing broadcasts to the neighborhood each hour, much louder than the mechanical, rope-strung bells ringing from the Baptist church two blocks down.
Is the recording of bells from Rome or Ita's native Ireland or of electronic bells hidden in an algorithm?


*Don't worry, I was honest and handed back the extra ballot. I didn't see any winking and nodding going on, so I don't suspect conspiracy although the Republican voting judge was writing furiously on a notepad after I approached the judges table with the extra ballot. Maybe he suddenly thought of lyrics to a song he's been working out in his head. Maybe he was drawing my picture. For some reason, I prefer this last scenario over the other two.