Elizabeth Martenia used to cry as she walked out of her Joliet church in the early '90s. The congregation had become her support system, but she feared losing them all if she revealed the secret that consumed her. So she buried her reality.  She stopped going to the doctors, stopped taking care of her body and her mind.  She pretended the HIV wasn't there. "I was so beat down in this church, not being able to be honest about it," said Martenia, who now makes the weekly 40-mile trip from Joliet to a small Englewood church.  "You don't get the help, you don't get the guidance.  These were people who were supposed to know how to deal with this.  And I thought I shouldn't say anything." The pastors at Martenia's new South Side church have a different take. They believe that promoting a culture of silence on HIV/AIDS will just perpetuate the worst health epidemic currently facing black Americans. "People see we don't judge them for it," said KenQwonna Clarke, pastor of Voice of the Word Church in Englewood with her husband Stephen Christopher Clarke. "If you're going to address the issue, don't undercut it.  Deal with the lifestyle separately." Clarke and her husband are among a growing number of Chicago religious figures who see their role as more than merely preaching church doctrine. Pushing her views condemning non-marital sex and homosexuality is now a lower priority.  At this point, the stakes are simply too high.   "I might tell them, 'What you're doing, I'm not feeling it,' " said Clarke, who was among dozens of pastors who recently gathered at a church on Chicago's West Side seeking ways to bring the AIDS issue front and center to their congregations. "But your health is more important." Nearly 20 years after Martenia's diagnosis, the black community is being decimated by the AIDS virus. While blacks account for just 13 percent of the U.S. population, they make up over 50 percent of the country's approximately 40,600 HIV/AIDS cases.  The disease is now the number one killer of black women ages 23-34. "When I was a kid, [folks] used to say they'd find something to kill all the black people," said Lloyd Kelly, co-founder of "Let's Talk, Let's Test," a Chicago-based foundation dedicated to fighting the spread of  AIDS among African Americans."Well, guess what? This is it." The foundation helps small groups write grants and deal with government agencies, vital skills for agencies that work with African Americans affected by AIDS. Still, Kelly says, the vast majority of state funding goes to groups on the North Side. The foundation also worked for passage of the Illinois African-American HIV/AIDS Response Act in 2005, legislation that led to the testing of 35,000 Illinois prison inmates in its first year and 60,000 in its second. A few years ago, only 300 inmates were being tested. But many black church leaders are still reluctant to talk about the crisis, even though, according to Kelly, no one is in a better position to do so. Seventy percent of African Americans regularly attend church, giving clergymen an unparalleled audience and, some say, a responsibility to their congregations. "Why the faith community?" asked Sherman R. Tribble, a pastor who made the trek from Nashville to the Church of the Harvest in Garfield Park for last week's meeting. "Because we've got stuff nobody else has..As faith leaders we have access, access to their minds, access to their purses. We cannot be churches unless we do this." Kelly's plan of attack is simple: to focus on prevention through church-sponsored testing. The first step is ensuring that everyone with HIV knows they have it. On March 30, pastors involved with the program will give a sermon about HIV/AIDS and take a collection earmarked for AIDS. The money will be used to buy 500,000 testing kits and certifying two members of each congregation throughout Illinois to test for HIV. No one is sure how many churches will participate, but Kelly said religious figures have become far more receptive to confronting HIV/AIDS head-on than they were even a few years ago. "We appealed to their humanity," Kelly said. "We started really going after churches in 2000 to 2002, by saying this is not a morality issue, it's a public health issue." "Look at the people who were sitting there five years ago and look at who's not there now. Many of them died of AIDS." Once testing becomes more widespread, some hope the stigma and misconceptions about AIDS that still linger in the African-American community may begin to lift. "We still have a psychology of denial," said Lynne Owens Mock, a clinical and community psychologist with the Community Council for Mental Health and a pastor in her South Side church. "People want to believe they can't get it, and it's really hard to break through that denial." "Some people are really good at merging a public health message with a moral message," she continued. "But to say, 'Don't have sex' is a waste of my breath." Still, breaking through a collective denial isn't easy.  Honesty about partners and sexual history is even harder to reveal in a community atmosphere that continues to hold deep prejudices against homosexuality and contradictions on concepts of manliness. And many women, she added, "crave intimacy and monogamy. To use a condom implies mistrust." There's still a bit of a subconscious "Magic factor" among blacks, Mock added. People see a healthy Magic Johnson and think HIV isn't a big deal, that "all I need is to take a pill and I'll be ok." Some religious leaders will continue to resist the idea, said Pastor Zach Gibson of Chicago, but some of the divisions within the church over AIDS may fall along generational lines. "Many come from a generation where sexual talk was taboo," said Gibson, an assistant pastor at House of Correction Church of God and Christ in Chicago's Austin neighborhood. "We need to talk about this. It may not be comfortable, but you'll see how good it can be for the community. If you expect this subject to be taboo, what do you expect?"...

Chicago polling sites reported several minor machine errors Tuesday during voting hours, but the day was relatively free of the major problems that have plagued previous Illinois elections. City officials had maintained the electronic voting machine kinks that marred elections in 2006 would not be a problem this year, thanks to better backup systems, repeated system tests and more experienced judges, said Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen. Voters entering the polling place had the option of two separate mechanisms: an ATM-like touch screen machine, and an optical scan machine in which voters drew a line next to their pick before placing the paper ballot in a scanner. In one 50th Ward polling place, the U Lucky Dawg restaurant on Western Ave., a defective scanner machine needed to be replaced, so for a few hours North Side voters were forced to use touch screens. "It's why every technician has an extra machine," said ward service technician Adam Cannon, who hauled in the replacement scanner a few hours after the error was reported. "It was pretty simple and probably happening quite a bit today." Later Cannon delivered activator cards missing from the equipment package delivered to a Northwest Side precinct on West Peterson -- cards needed just to start up the touch screen machine. After that, he headed to another precinct to restock the pens used for the optiscan machine. "A lot of voters were walking off with the pens," Cannon said. According to an assortment of election judges, the majority of city voters chose to use the optiscans. In a 1st Ward precinct in Ukrainian Village, about 150 voters had used the optiscan and only three used the touch screen by midafternoon. When the polls closed at 7 p.m., election judges moved to collect memory cards in each machine. The memory cards compiled the vote totals throughout the day. Judges placed each cartridge, one by one, in another machine that consolidated precinct totals and then electronically transmitted the results to a central computer at the board of elections office on Washington Street, Allen said. If the transmission step doesn't work, memory cards are brought directly to a predetermined local high school where backup machines can send the totals. If that still doesn't work, judges bring the cards directly downtown. In the November 2000 general election before Chicago went electronic, over 120,000 Illinois punch card ballots failed to register a vote for president, more votes unaccounted for than the number caught in Florida chad limbo. But even if all those votes were cast for George W. Bush, the state's 21 electoral votes still would have been deposited in the Al Gore bank. But problems continued when Illinois switched to a fully electronic system in 2006. In the March primaries and November elections, there were widespread reports of paper jams in the optiscans, long delays in counting and missing memory cards in Cook and DuPage counties. "I feel like I have to learn something new every year, and I don't want to mess something up," said election judge Nancy Thomas at her Ukrainian Village post, who has been working elections since the 1970s. "We used to feel beat up at the end of the day, but now it's just brain-wracking." A panel led by former U.S. Circuit Court Judge Abner Mikva -- and filled with local techies -- found the 2006 system failures were due to a blip in the connection between the transmitters at the local polling sites and the receivers tallying the votes....

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE Last-minute voters were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, battling for elbow room as they filled out forms in the final hours of the voter "grace period," a last chance for Chicagoans who missed the registration deadline. "It's been a rush all day," said one board of elections worker, observing the scene. "I guess it's human nature to wait until the last minute." More than 2,600 city residents who missed the registration deadline cast their ballot during the grace period, a two-week window which allowed people to register and vote all in one shot. About 700 of those voters waited until the final day of the grace period, pouring into the downtown Board of Elections office to make their votes count before it was too late. "I'm kind of a procrastinator and I missed the date," one North Sidewoman, who declined to give her full name, said as she waited for the elevator after voting. "I don't usually like voting because I don't really know the issues. But there's a woman running, so I thought that was a big step." On a train from Detroit on Tuesday morning, Sachin Patel, who wasn't registered to vote, started talking politics with a stranger who clued him in: If Patel wanted to vote, he had better get to the downtown office by the end of the day. "I wasn't sure who I wanted to vote for out of two," said Patel, who until Tuesday was registered in California. "I didn't have time to really make a choice. So I just went with my instinct." In the Cook County suburbs, elections officials said 561 people voted during the grace period. About 135 of those voted on the last day. At least one person got an unexpected bonus when she showed up at the Board of Elections on Tuesday. Hillary Clark didn't fully understand the purpose of the grace period until she was pointed to a voting machine. "I didn't realize I had to vote today. I thought I just had to register," said Clark, who's from the west suburbs. "But I guess it was easier to just make one trip for it." With Feb. 5 approaching, Lauren Karwoski of Chicago called the voting office Tuesday morning for detals about registration dates. "I called and they said today was the last day, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, I got to get down there,'" Karwoski said. "It was just luck that I called today." Friends Shirley Plumber and Evon Wells confessed that they accidentally missed the first deadline, but purposely waited until the last day to vote once they learned of the grace period. But despite waiting, they said there was no chance, they said, of missing this deadline. "My votes count, always," said Wells, who made the trek from 79th streeton the South Side. "And I always pick a winner." Andrew Kennis, who lives in Logan Square, didn't realize he had to register again simply because he moved. "They make every aspect of the system as complicated and hard as possible," said Kennis, a freelance journalist."People have died trying to get the right to vote, so I'm spitting on their graves if I don't."...

They might be too young to vote, but they're old enough to supervise the polling sites.More than 1,800 Chicago high school juniors and seniors will be dispersed throughout the county to help preside over the polling stations on Feb. 5, even though most are too young to cast a ballot. Despite a lack of experience with the voting process, teenagers are quickest to grasp the new voting technology, according to Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen. "This generation is more comfortable working with computers than any other," said Allen, who added that Chicago has more high school election workers than any other city. Students must have a 3.0 grade point average to participate in the program, and are paid $170 - the same as the adults receive - for both the expected 18 to 20 hours of work on Super Tuesday and the four-hour interactive crash course. High schoolers make up more than one-tenth of the 14,000 total election judges and are placed in a polling site in their own ward, according to Brian Brady, executive director of the Mikva Challenge, which has turbocharged student recruitment in recent years and doubled the number of students from last year. "They're energetic, non-partisan . and all smart enough to problem-solve," said Brady, who added that Mikva, which is funded by the McCormick Tribune Foundation, contacts high schools and pays teachers to recruit student workers. "It's a great civics lesson for young people, and they're probably the best judges in the polling places." State Rep. Julie Hamos of Evanston said the thinking behind allowing teens to serve as judges, which took effect in the November 2000 election, was simple. "We are always looking for volunteers because it's not well-paid, it's hard work, it's a long day and we needed more of them." No school recruited more students than Morgan Park High School, which will supply 230 student judges. But some students find it odd that they are allowed such a prominent role on Election Day, but are still ineligible to vote. "It's kind of weird," said Alexandra Bryant, a senior at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep on 111thStreet. "I'm in charge of all these adult votes, but I can't even do it." "It's a little ironic that most can't vote," said Michael Altman, a Mikva consultant and retired teacher. "But hopefully they'll be informed and active voters later on, and they'll get their family and friends to vote. And they'll be more aware when they vote in the future." Brooks senior Alice McElroy said she initially signed up to collect the pay day, but said she's become more politically aware since becoming a judge.She said she's feeling confident enough about her training that she will probably just skim the 72-page guidebook with her, check it when questions occur or turn to veteran judges for help. But others aren't quite so confident. "I'm worried I won't know exactly what to do," said Bryant. "I'm just a kid. I'm under 18. I'm hoping they'll have a little sympathy." RELATED LINKS High school students ready to help you vote....

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE Area elections officials say electronic voting machines that will be used for the Feb. 5 primary should provide the most accurate results to date, but not everyone is so confident. Some groups claim the increasing complexity of machine technology makes tampering with and hacking into the machines easier than ever. "The process is no longer transparent," said Melisa Urda, vice chairman of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project. "We have no confidence that they're tallying the vote correctly." In the ATM-like touchscreen machine, a voter can confirm the final choice in a printout under glass, creating a voter-verifiable paper trail in the machine, according to a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections, Jim Allen. In the optical scan machines, a voter must draw a line on paper that's scanned - paper that Allen said only gets reviewed in the tightest of races. But the paper means little to voting group officials. The vulnerability of the overly complex machines and memory cards, made by private companies with what many deem to be questionable backgrounds, trumps any paper, according to Dan Ashby, director of Election Defense Alliance, a group that advocates transparent voting. "When you have machines with code millions of lines long, you have the opportunity to bury all sorts of voting mechanisms," said Ashby, co-founder of alliance, which is based in California."If you were setting up a rational program, it would be 100 lines or less." Allen, for his part, said the system is effective because it provides a more accurate count. The machines used in Cook County, he said, will minimize overvoting and undervoting. In the 2000 presidential election, Allen said, seven out of 100 ballots were counted as having either zero votes on them or two or more.With the newer machines, which Allen said were used for the first time in an aldermanic runoff in 2006, that number was less than two out of 1,000. Allen added that the machines are completely usable for the blind, deaf and disabled. In the U.S., most counties determine independently which private voting company will provide the machines.Cook County uses Sequoia machines;DuPage County uses Premier Election Solutions, which used to be called Diebold. "The Diebold TSX, the most-used machine in the state of Illinois," Ashby said, "is probably the most notorious voting machine in America." According to Jean Kaczmarek, co-chair of the Illinois Coalition Integrity Project in DuPage County, which uses the TSX, said the machines can be tampered with even at the voting sites. "The touch screens, from start to finish, are filled with security holes," Kaczmarek said. "Physically you can get into the machine with a paperclip.Diebold uses hotel minibar-type keys for them, and published a picture of the key online." "Once you're inside, you can do all kinds of stuff.You can put in viruses that can flip votes, and it can be totally undetectable," she added."What you vote for doesn't necessarily mean that's how it will be tabulated." But election officials say tampering at voting sites is not possible, since workers are constantly monitoring the scene. The memory cards in DuPage County go to a single site on election night to be processed, according to Doreen Nelson, assistant executive director of the DuPage County election commission. A day after the election, the county commission requires that two judges compare the number of total ballots on the memory cards to the number of applications cast in the precinct. "There is a complete checks and balances," Nelson said. Critics of the current system say returning toa paper ballot, at least on a partial level, or auditing a certain percent of precincts, will better ensure the candidate who received the most votes gets elected. "We used to have hand-counted paper ballots," Urda said. "Right now we leave all ownership to technicians and software people, who we are blindly told to trust."...

When a window seat on the el opens up next to Chris Lambert, he slides from the aisle to the inside, making sure no one has to climb over him, knocking their knees into his, to claim a seat. "I don't like when other people sit on the outside," said Lambert, an area resident who is a student at Brown University. "It's like they're saying, 'Don't sit with me.'" Lambert's history professor, who was seated across from him on a southbound Red Line train at midday Thursday, leaned back and squinted his eyes at his student. "That's exactly what I'm saying," said Elliot Gorn. On rush hour mornings, Blue Line riders waiting at Division Street are already pressed up against the glass when the door opens for Billy Arkush, who lives near Division and Ashland and tends bar for special events. Arkush, usually late for work already, has no alternative but to push his way onto the train, "even if a train is coming in five minutes." "I get lots of dirty looks, faces, little sounds under their breath," Arkush said."I'll just tell them, 'I'm sorry, man.I can't be late for work.'" South Sider Andrew Harris says when there's a crowd hovered around the door with plenty of room left in the middle of the car, he doesn't rely on others to fill the space "I can," he says, pausing, "cause some tension." said Harris. And that tension is palpable when you weigh about 230 pounds. He chooses his words carefully."I'll move them out of the way myself." He cracks a small smile. "I don't need to say anything." But Harris acknowledges that he gets angry when others pull the same move, "unless they recognize what they're doing."Harris, an Englewood resident, says a stare usually gets a quick pusher apology. Keith, nicknamed "legs," sits in a wheelchair on the corner of State and Adams with an empty cup.He quietly repeats the word "help" for everyone who passes by.When he uses the lift to get on the bus, the quick, uncomfortable glances he gets from other passengers make him feel less than human. "I'm not a puppy. I'm a man," said Keith, who lost both legs to diabetes 13 years ago and can't extend one of his arms. "But I don't want them to just ignore me either, you know? Just a smile, people saying 'hello,' it really lifts your spirits." DePaul student Jeanine Smith, who lives in Chicago, said a woman holding up a Nordstrom bag poked her in the eye a few days ago on a jam-packed Red Line car. "People hit me in the face all the time," she said. Despite the track record, Smith said she doesn't plan to lower her own bag to prevent possible face-stabbings of others. "The ground's too dirty," she said....

Even the bus is a prime spot for Maria Gonzalez to reel in a few more Chicagoans to get their names on the voting rolls. “I go to stores, to churches, anywhere,” said Gonzalez, a member of the Chicago group Mujeres Latinas en Accion, which concentrated on registering immigrants in the Pilsen neighborhood. “Every time I see people, I show them a flyer,” she added through a translator. Israel Garza considers his choices during Chicago's early voting period. Garza, 37, said he is voting early to be sure his vote is counted. "If I can make the time to vote, then anybody can," he said. Peter Holderness/Medill Gonzalez is one of dozens of volunteers responsible for registering over 5,600 Chicago-area immigrants since August to vote for the first time this election season. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant Refugee Rights, which organized the registration push, announced the final tally in a short news conference led by Cook County Clerk David Orr on Tuesday. After the announcement, a group of early voters headed to the machines to make their political picks before the Feb. 5 primary. Lena Tleib votes early in Chicago: "Every vote counts, and it's important that Muslims in America get out and vote." Peter Holderness/MEDILL While the majority of new immigrant voters are Latinos on the South Side and the northwest suburbs, over 600 new voters are Arab American, a population that has felt especially marginalized in recent years. “I feel like our community needs a voice,” said Lena Tleib, an administrator at the Universal School in Bridgeview, an Islamic education center. “Many have experienced racial profiling and racism in the workplace. But the top priority is foreign policy. What’s happening over there is very personal to people.” This is the first year the nonpartisan group has made the registration push in time for the primaries. The coalition mobilized volunteers to go door to door and to hang around naturalization ceremonies to pursue newly eligible voters, according to Juan Jose Gonzalez, a spokesman for the New American Democracy Project. Evergreen Park resident Maria Diaz said people in the community responded with mixed feelings to the idea of voting, partly because many are mistrustful of the system. But Diaz sees voting as her responsibility, acting as a representative for those who have not completed the naturalization process. “I vote for those who cannot vote,” she said through a translator. Khawla Ahmad works with the Mosque Foundation to increase political participation in Chicago's Muslim communities. "I've voted for the past 30 years," Ahmad said. "I know I can make a difference by exercising my right to vote." Peter Holderness/MEDILL...