Let us know what you think about our new County Board maps and Legislative District maps.  I think our staff has done a great job.

The free tools available on the web are truly amazing.  One that we’ve added recently to our site is Google Translate.  There was a time where I was conversationally fluent in Spanish, but those days are past.  So it’s a little tough for me to really evaluate the quality of the translation offered here.  Regardless, this is certainly an improvement over nothing and gives us one other way to reach out to the many different ethnic groups that avail themselves of the services of our office.

I’d love to hear comments from anyone who is fluent in any of these languages.

Minutes for the County Board meeting aren’t posted until approved at the next County Board meeting.  But here is the roll call for the Management Performance Associates contract that was approved last night.

YES (21)

Chris Doenitz , John Jay, Larry Sapp, Ron Bensyl, Stan James, Kevin Hunt, Brad Jones, Jonathan Schroeder, Alan Nudo, Steve Moser,   Stanley S. O’Connor, Claudia Gross, Michael Richards, Matthew Gladney, Janet Anderson, Carrie Melin, Pius Weibel, Tom Betz, Brendan McGinty, Barbara Wysocki, Steve Beckett

NO (4)

Carol Ammons, Lloyd Carter, Jr. , Lorraine Cowart, Jennifer K. Putman

The County Board meeting will be broadcast tonight on Cable channel 2 in CU.  There is a closed session anticipated shortly after public participation.  We’ve had some difficulty getting back live on the air, but hopefully that won’t be a problem tonight.

Anyone following the local news is aware of the severe budget problems at the Champaign County Nursing Home. In January, the County Board passed a resolution creating a Nursing Home Board of Directors. The first meeting for the new board is set for 7:30 in the morning on May 5.

The Supreme Court today ruled constitutional laws such as the one in Indiana that require voters to show identification when they vote.

Each election, we get a number of questions from voters about the lack of this requirement in Illinois. The only people required to show ID in Illinois are those registrants who did present ID at the time of their registration. Under the Help America Vote Act those voters have to show ID at the polling place.

The Bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform headed by Jimmy Carter and James Baker recommended that all voters be required to show ID when they vote.

This is a difficult issue. I have a lot of sympathy for the views of those who find these laws to be burdensome. And I’d hate to have people lose their right to vote because they happened to leave home without an ID.

However, on balance, with the overwhelming concern from the public about election fraud, I see voter ID laws as being a good idea. We need to do more to give the public confidence that every vote is being counted and that only those people who are eligible to vote are able to vote. Of course, any voter ID law should be accompanied by appropriate provisional voting provisions that ensure that people who inadvertently forget their identification are still allowed to vote and given a chance after the election to give their ID.

I’m planning to make a trip to South Bend next week to see how the Indiana law works in practice. I’ll post about it when I get back.

Good news for local governments. But I guess bad news for your personal cash flow. Property tax bills are set to go out on May 2nd. Champaign County is one of just 5 or 6 counties to get their bills out by the statutory date in the beginning of May. Great work between my office, the Supervisor of Assessments, the Board of Review, all local assessors and the County Treasurer makes this possible.

It can’t come at a better time as this will give a needed cash infusion to Champaign County which is running on empty at this time. The General Corporate fund should see about a million dollars by the end of May and the nursing home fund should get about $150,000.

You’ve got until June 2nd to pay your bill.

You can look up your bill right now at the County Treasurer’s website.

One of the departments in Champaign County that is doing great work is the GIS Consortium. Under Mark Toalson, and now Leanne Brehob-Riley, our mapping in the County has made great strides. Our office has been working with them on the political boundaries and have begun the process of creating new precinct maps. This will be followed up with new maps for County Board and Legislative lines. Here is the map page on our website.

For each election, we hope to be able to craft special maps in each precinct to show voters where they live in regard to the various elections and/or referenda that are being presented.

As I reviewed the maps we’ve put together so far, I started to muse about what I’d want in a precinct map as a candidate and volunteer. If you’ve got thoughts and would like to volunteer to help my staff put together these maps, we’d love to hear from you. Hopefully, by September, we’ll have maps that will fit the needs of voters, volunteers, and candidates.

This was one of the most challenging elections in my 11 years as County Clerk. There was barely time to catch a breath the whole day. I think my staff and our election judges did an outstanding job in handling the recordbreaking turnout today.

Please use this to post comments and questions about the election. I’ll be posting more in the coming days, including a discussion about the ballots that we sent out to polling places and how we went about ordering ballots. That was certainly the big story for the day. But there is plenty more to discuss as well.

Follow this link for the absentee and early voting numbers so far. This link will show you a comparison with two years ago. We’ll keep it updated at some point each day.