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Unclear on the concept

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Illinois

A technical problem with closing hundreds of electronic voting machines hampered the DuPage County Election Commission’s ability to count ballots Tuesday night, officials said.

Despite “rigorous” pre-election testing of the ballot tabulation equipment and the tabulation process, officials said difficulties occurred when they tried to close optical scan machines and get results at some precincts.

As a result, bipartisan teams of judges had to bring about 265 voting machines to the election commission office in Wheaton to tabulate the results.

“Rigorous” pre-election testing?

* Right…

The executive director of the DuPage County Election Commission said that the problem had to do with a piece of paper that was used at the end of the voting process, it was too thick for the machines.

#FacePalm

Rigorous testing didn’t discover that the paper wouldn’t fit into the machine?

* NBC 5…

“I have been in contact with the DuPage Election Commission and am assured your voting results are secure and forthcoming,” DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin said [last night] on Facebook. “However, the commission has failed the voters of DuPage once again with their inability to provide timely election results. This is not acceptable.”

posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:06 pm

Comments

I think it’s quite funny that DuPage county had delayed counts. The county where Ive’s is from and the one she was counting on winning.

Comment by Real Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:14 pm
The DuPage BOEC had both old paper stock closing cards (on proper weight paper) and new paper stock closing cards (on too thick stock) on hand.

Presumably, the testing was only done using old paper stock closing cards. Embarrassing, certainly. But somewhat understandable as to not being the sort of thing one would necessarily think of in the testing process.

Comment by titan Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:14 pm
I seem to recall that they have had issues with paper before.

Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:17 pm
And there was an advisory referendum to merge the DuPage County Election Commission with the DuPage County Clerk. Passed with 56%.

Comment by My Button is Broke... Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:19 pm
Obviously Madigan rears his ugly head again, right Bruce?

Comment by PublicServant Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:30 pm
The irony is there was a an advisory referendum on the ballot about folding the DuPage Election Commission into the clerk’s office.

Comment by Dance Band on the Titanic Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:38 pm
I recall that in the 2012 primary, there was a vendor printing issue with oversized ballots that affected several Illinois counties. DuPage was one of them, but it wasn’t a countywide problem (for example, my polling place didn’t have that issue).

I was a tech judge in DuPage last night and it was… an interesting time. We were fortunate enough to have a field rep provide us with a properly-sized ender card at around 8pm, so we were able to close down normally (albeit delayed) and didn’t need to haul a tabulator to Wheaton.

Comment by Tim Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:40 pm
https://youtu.be/hqPRwq3QJsk

Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:42 pm
== The county where Ive’s is from and the one she was counting on winning.==

Dude, she did win DuPage, and all the collars.

Comment by A guy Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 12:45 pm
Hard to top the DuPage Election Commission in the “you had one job” category

Comment by In 630 Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 1:21 pm
–Dude, she did win DuPage, and all the collars.–

Not Lake.

Comment by wordslinger Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 1:45 pm
Good on Daiber for holding off Marshall.

Comment by LXB Wednesday, Mar 21, 18 @ 2:21 pm