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They had one job and they didn’t do it right

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Illinois

* Remember Moon Khan? He’s the guy who ran as a write-in for DuPage County recorder, but was initially denied a victory after a bunch of votes weren’t counted. The DuPage Election Commission found 170 votes yesterday after a court-ordered recount, so he’ll be on the November ballot.

The Daily Herald is not amused…

The DuPage Election Commission needs to investigate its processes and training of judges further and make significant changes before it runs another Election Night debacle as it did on March 15. It’s already been criticized for its slowness in counting ballots, and now it’s clear that judges erred in several write-in contests. […]

An earlier vote recount resulted in two Republican precinct committeeman write-in candidates also being declared winners. […]

Couple these errors with the need to investigate new technology to help speed up counting, and it’s clear that the election commission needs to get to work to improve it’s one main job.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 9:34 am

Comments

I thought from the title that the post would be about the Governor and legislators. But I guess that would only be right if it said “one main job.”

Comment by Keyrock Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 9:42 am
If such errors happened in the county of Cook, we’d be hearing accusations of corruption. In DuPage, it’s just accusations of arrogance.

Comment by anon Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 9:51 am
It is in each party’s best interest that this job is done with the highest integrity, as well. Why would a political party be a mere bystander to this?

In my opinion this isn’t just a failure of the county’s election process, but also a failure of the political parties as well.

Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 9:56 am
I appreciate all of the ways that technology has improved my life. But there are just some things that arent necessarily improved with it.

One of them is voting.

Voting should be done on a paper ballot.

It is the lifeblood of any Democracy, let alone this one.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Comment by Jack Stephens Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 9:58 am
Voting is done, for the most part, on a paper ballot in DuPage, and that is the ballots that cause the problem.

Comment by Tom Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 10:08 am
When the Herald comes down on a DuPage County operation, you know it’s messed up.

Comment by In 630 Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 10:36 am
If the Daily Herald editorial board is (apparently willfully) completely ignorant of the issues existing in election administration. Problems of this type go back to the punch card days, and have sporadically occurred all over the state for many decades.
Poll workers are so overburdened with new stuff to do (and little in the way of time and resources to do them) that they aren’t able to get everything done perfectly.
And DuPage was correct, once they had declared the results, a court order was needed to go into the precinct materials and look at the ballots. It was also not so obvious that things were amiss before they declared the results, One might have gotten some clues as to the problem with some detailed analysis of the returns, but there is no clear procedure to follow up on such hints of problems leaving the various election authorities to generate their own inevitably arbitrary internal procedures (which is a practice increasingly frowned upon these days).

Comment by titan Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 10:43 am
Wouldn’t it be easier to make the person with the most votes the winner? What’s with this arbitrary 844 vote requirement? And yes, I understand that that is what the law says, but it would be much simpler to change the law so that the person with the most votes wins.

Comment by Nick Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 10:45 am
The Daily Herald needs to get to work to improve its copy desk’s one main job.

Comment by Northsider Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:01 am
I have said it before and I will say it again now.

I really think they should make lawyers work as election judges every couple of years as a pro-bono requirement.

You have a very temporary work force on the front lines for an election who tend to skew older, who may or may not have gotten training on the latest changes. You continue to add technology to the process at the polling place, as people who work with technology will tell you (or anyone who works with any equipment might say) it is stuff you don’t use that often that is usually your biggest problem and election equipment is the very definition of that.

Secondly you keep adding new requirements (not necessarily bad ones) like same day registration, provisional ballots, etc that add to the complexity of the process for your front line worker (at the polling place). Along with that you have added a general technology load with the electronic voting machines and related gear that also adds a layer of complexity when it comes to corner cases (write-in-votes) as well as adding additional expectations (why are the results not on line yet).

So how do you improve this…

Every voting authority in the state uses one machine that has a touch screen option and a paper scan option.
Every ballot produces a paper copy (think this is true in IL already)
You have two groups of judges, the standard case and the special case. So if you have anything that requires “extra” work, provisional, same day reg, etc they are shunted over to the “special” election workers
You have lawyers working both as election judges and at the election authority.

Now for the radical idea…..

You call election judges like you call jurors but with special education requirements…. Not sure if this is that good of an idea but lets put it out there.

Comment by OneMan Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:02 am
The voting machines that Peoria county uses seem to be the best of both worlds, they are electronic with a paper record like scrolling store receipt that is visible but not accessible to to the voter. I don’t hear complaints about Peoria Country after the elections. I am just a voter but it just seems to work.

Comment by frayedcat Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:03 am
Write ins in Dupage account for way too much human interaction. First, you’ve got to fill in the circle for the Write in choice and then actually write in the name, enough so to discern the intent of the voter. It can be spelled wrong, but a reasonable person needs to be able to discern intent. Ties go to the runner (the candidate).

To do this, they have to be manually tabulated at the polling place. There are both D’s and R’s there, but it’s a human exercise none the less.

Since a write in is an exception by nature, maybe a better way is to separate ballots with write in votes and a name provided and let those be counted (again) at the commission among a special group of counters designated just for this purpose.

Comment by A guy Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:19 am
A Guy might be right.

Write in ballots need more human review and confirmation. There usually aren’t that many, but they can swing a local election.

Comment by walker Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:33 am
“Wouldn’t it be easier to make the person with the most votes the winner? What’s with this arbitrary 844 vote requirement?”

The primary’s write-in candidate requirement isn’t arbitrary; it is designed to mirror the primary’s signature requirement.

The purpose of the signature requirement is to keep candidates without even a minimal level of community support from cluttering up the ballot. (Whether that is an effective, optimal or fair way of keeping ballots uncluttered is debatable.)

In order to appear on the primary ballot as a recorder candidate in DuPage County, the Illinois Election Code requires 844 valid signatures. The primary’s write-in candidate requirement of 844 votes is to hold write-in candidates to the minimal level of community support necessary for candidates who get on the ballot via a petition filing.

tl;dr- 844 voters is the statutory minimum standard for candidate legitimacy in that primary election.

– MrJM

Comment by @MisterJayEm Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:41 am
===Whether that is an effective, optimal or fair way of keeping ballots uncluttered is debatable===

This part is more what I was getting at. Like I said, I know the law. But it’s a dumb law in my opinion.

Comment by Nick Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:48 am
===Whether that is an effective, optimal or fair way of keeping ballots uncluttered is debatable===

This is more the point I was trying to make. I understand what the law says.

Comment by Nick Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:51 am
Sorry about the double post. It wasn’t showing up before

Comment by Nick Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 11:52 am
This happens more often than people know - even when using electronic voting machines.

Comment by Mama Friday, Apr 22, 16 @ 4:18 pm