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Candidate declared winner by 0.361 of a vote

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Illinois

A hearing officer has recommended Gail Simpson should be declared the winner of the race for the Ward 2 seat on the Springfield City Council that was initially too close to call.

Retired Judge John Mehlick, who is overseeing a vote recount process on behalf of the city, said in a report made public Tuesday that after taking into account the recounted ballots and his rulings on which disputed ballots should be awarded to a candidate or thrown out, Simpson defeated Shawn Gregory by 0.361 of a vote.

The fraction-of-a-vote advantage happened because of 13 ballots where voters were assisted in filling out their ballots, but the required affidavits that must be filed by in such cases were incomplete. Most of the voters who got assistance live at the Mary Bryant Home for the Blind and Visually Impaired, according to documents filed during the challenge process.

In his report, Mehlick said that due to the error, all 13 ballots should be thrown out and all candidates’ vote totals should be reduced proportionally based on what percentage of the vote they received in the precincts where the 13 ballots were cast.

The full report is here.

posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 10:41 am

Comments

So they throw out 13 ballots and don’t just total up the remaining ballots to determine the winner? I would love to hear the tortured logic behind that justifies the method they used. There are no ties in baseball and no partial votes in elections. I think in this case the winner is the same either way, but what stupid way to recount the votes.

Comment by Captain Obvious Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 10:52 am
===I would love to hear the tortured logic===

Um, you could read the report.

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 11:13 am
Understanding process to election law is critical to comprehending “every vote counts”

Lucrative law, that election law stuff.

Comment by Oswego Willy Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 11:15 am
==Candidate declared winner by 0.361 of a vote==

I thought the report was only a recommendation, and City Council still has to vote to accept the recommendation.

Headline seems misleading to me. More appropriate to say “Hearing officer recommends Simpson to be declared the winner”

Comment by MG85 Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 11:18 am
” Most of the voters who got assistance live at the Mary Bryant Home for the Blind and Visually Impaired”

Plenty of “influence” in those nursing home assisted votes. Standard practice in Cook county to round up straight one party votes out of disabled voters.
If the voter decides to be assisted by a Nursing Home Judge, two Election Judges of opposite political parties must stipulate and sign - but in many precincts the opposing party judge is just a proxy for the first.

Comment by Donnie Elgin Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 11:26 am
It would be nice if Judge Mehlick cited the laws or cases he is relying on to make his decisions

Comment by Grand Avenue Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 11:34 am
Glad the 14th Amendment cleared all that up.

Comment by ChrisB Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 11:57 am
TO MG85: You are correct. The Hearing Officer’s report is only a recommendation to the City Council. Each side has the right to file a pleading contesting the report. On July 2d, Gregory’s attorneys (including former Madigan counsel Jim Morphew) filed a Motion For Clarification. The Council, can vote to accept the report, or vote for some other result, including declaring Gregory the winner. Then, I believe either side as the right to appeal the Council’s final decision to the courts.

Comment by truthtopower Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 12:46 pm
When it is determined that:
1) a voter in a precinct was not qualified, and
2) it cannot be determined which ballot the voter cast,
a precinct that returned a X to Y margin for Candidate A over Candidate B would have X/Y of a vote deducted from Candidate A and 1/Y deducted from Candidate B for every ballot to be removed.

In this case, the 13 voters who were assisted in filling out their ballots were “not qualified” because the affidavits required to validate those votes were not properly filled out. Because even voters receiving assistance cast *secret* ballots, it cannot be determined which ballots cast at the polling place were improperly validated by affidavit.

In other words, 13 bad ballots were cast, but the hearing officer is unable to determine for whom they were cast. Because we cannot know which ballots were unqualified, the problem of unqualified votes is remedied by a proportionate reduction of all the votes cast at that precinct. (The math determining the proportionate reduction of the candidates totals in this case is provided in the tables on page 4 of the report.)

Although proportionate reduction method is a less-than-perfect remedy – the reduction doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual votes cast on the unqualified ballots – it *is* a remedy.

The good news is that all that is necessary for the proportionate reduction method to be eliminated is for a candidate challenging the method to successfully offer the courts 1) a more rational remedy (seemingly impossible with secret ballots), or 2) an explanation of how no remedy is better than the imperfect proportionate reduction remedy (seemingly violates Ill. Con.).

– MrJM

Comment by @misterjayem Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 12:47 pm
This has to be the closest race ever/anywhere — less than a vote. Wow. Surely the loser will think of all the small things that could have been done to get just one more vote. Easier to lose by a lot in many ways.

Comment by anon Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 1:05 pm
===0.361 of a vote===

Wut.

Comment by Token Conservative Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 1:33 pm
Tom Shafer, who finished fourth in the race, is a regular caller on the local radio talk show circuit in Springfield. He had his take on this result this morning on Sam Madonia’s show on 1450.

Comment by Leatherneck Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 1:39 pm
Fractional vote reduction works like this.

Say there is a precinct with 30 total votes and Smith had 20 and Jones had 10. Say 5 of the ballots have something wrong with them but because they got mixed in with the rest you don’t know which they are. Then the precedent from the Supreme Court of Illinois is to say the precinct only had 25 valid votes and that those votes are in the proportion of the original vote. Since it was originally 2/3 for Smith and 1/3 for Jones, that precinct would officially be:

Smith 16.67 votes
Jones 8.33 votes

Comment by Grand Avenue Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 1:44 pm
As my example shows, if you are the losing candidate, you want to find problems in precincts that you lost big because it means your opponent will lose votes, because in the above, Smith lost 3.33 votes while Jones only lost 1.67 votes, meaning Jones is net 1.66 ahead of where he finished on election day

Comment by Grand Avenue Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 1:47 pm
Say on election Day Jones lost 100 to 98 and two precincts had the reduction from my example, that means Smith would lose 6.66 votes and Jones would lose 3.34 votes so the final court ordered result would be

Smith 93.34
Jones 94.66

and therefore Jones would go from losing by 2 votes to winning by 1.32 votes

Comment by Grand Avenue Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 1:50 pm
Capitan obvious-
since ballots do not contain the personal information of the voter how do you suggest they determine which ballots to remove? Not so obvious what to do, huh?

Comment by Publius Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 2:03 pm
It’s 0.361% better than a coin flip.

Comment by A guy Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 2:25 pm
Hi Leatherneck. I missed Shafer’s take on the radio this morning. Can you briefly recap? Thanks.

Comment by Cheswick Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 2:28 pm
My brief take on this race is that Tom Shafer ruined it by being in the race.

Comment by Cheswick Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 2:30 pm
It’s like I always say about basketball: if you don’t want to risk losing on a last-second bad call, be up by more than…uh…0.361 points.

Comment by CEA Wednesday, Jul 3, 19 @ 4:15 pm