The City of Champaign Township also failed to hold a lottery and will be conducting one tomorrow at 8:30.  As with the City of Urbana, we will suspend early voting with the guidelines as stated below.

I want to clarify a few things regarding the issue of the order of candidates on the ballot for the City of Urbana.  First, the problems have been exacerbated by the lack of communication between the City Clerk and our office.  I have not received one call from the City Clerk regarding this problem.

I first heard of this potential problem less than two weeks ago.  I received a call from Rex Bradfield and a subsequent visit from Durl Kruse.  At about the same time, I received a phone message from Mayor Prussing.  This was the first time that I received any notification that was even remotely official about this issue.  I immediately called the Mayor back to inform her of the law and that my office had followed proper procedures.

I received a call from the City Attorney on Monday of last week, and immediately agreed to meet with him.  I informed him of the decision that I had arrived at on the previous Friday.  That was that I would print new ballots if I received a new certification.  I also informed him of the difficulties involved in creating new ballots but that I had every confidence in my staff’s ability to accomplish this if necessary.  I also told him that time was of the essence when it came to saving money.  The later we waited to make any changes, the more expensive it might become.  I specifically mentioned our statutory requirement to publish a specimen ballot.  I also told him that the votes of all absentee voters would be cast according to their wishes and that no one would be disenfranchised.  I also said that I did not see any statutory provisions requiring the City to pay for the costs of this mistake, but I thought it would be appropriate for them to do so.  I asked that we be called immediately when the City Clerk had made her decision so that we could make plans.

I truly expected a call within the day.  When no call was forthcoming for three days, we called the City Attorney on Thursday and learned that the decision had been made to not conduct a lottery.   When I learned that this matter was going to court,  I supplied an affidavit to the plaintiffs which laid out important information for the judge to consider in making a decision on this matter.

I was hoping for a call that a hearing had been scheduled on Friday and was disappointed when I didn’t receive one.  It was not until Saturday morning when I read the newspaper that I learned that the City Clerk had decided to hold a lottery.

I think it is worth pointing out here that this one week additional and unnecessary delay cost taxpayers at least an additional $5,000.  In an effort to save money this year, we decided to forego a full specimen publication in the News-Gazette, instead opting to use two rural papers.  Now, because of this last minute change, and the necessity to get a valid publication in a paper in the County, we are going to have to do the News-Gazette advertisement after all since it is the only newspaper with a publication deadline after the drawing.  If the City had moved quickly with the plan they are now implementing, we could have changed the publications in the rural papers in time to meet our statutory obligations.

As it is, the total cost for this mistake will be anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000.  I don’t believe I have any recourse within the law to recover that money from the city, but I will send them a bill and ask them to pay what the citizens of this County rightfully should expect of them.

Finally, in the Saturday morning news article, Mayor Prussing is quoted as saying that I should have told the City Clerk about this problem.  I learned about the problem from Prussing and had no knowledge, and could not have had any knowledge of the situation, prior to that phone call.  I had hearsay allegations from partisan political candidates in the day or two prior to my call from the mayor, but to suggest that I knew about this in January is an outright lie.

Throughout this whole process my office and I have been cooperative.  I have returned calls promptly and met with those who have concerns.  I have assured all that my staff is ready to tackle this daunting task and that no one who has already voted will be disenfranchised.  And while I believe the city should pay for this mistake, I have never made their payment a prerequisite for moving forward on this issue.

Our office has followed the law and done everything correctly in this process.  We intend to work hard to resolve this problem.  The suggestion by the mayor that we did anything improper is shameful.

Absentee and early voting for voters in the City of Urbana has been suspended pending a drawing for ballot placement by the Urbana City Clerk.  Here are the options for affected voters.

1.    Vote Early (no excuse) on Thursday from 8:00 until 4:30 or if you will be out of town, vote absentee in person on Friday from 8:00 until 4:30, Saturday from 8:30 until noon, or Monday from 8:00 until 5:00.

2.    Request an absentee ballot through the mail and expedite the process by signing the application in person in our office.  We will FedEx out the ballots on Thursday.  The returned ballot must be postmarked by April 6 to be counted.  The voter must pay the cost of postage on the return ballot. The law allows two weeks for ballots to be returned to our office.

3.    Come to our office after 1:00 pm on Wednesday and vote on a corrected ballot which will not yet have been tested to count accurately.  Your completed ballot will be placed in a sealed envelope and will be cast after the vote counting equipment has been fully tested.  The correct order of candidates on the ballot will be accurate, but it is possible that the computer layout will still need to be changed.  If it does need to be changed, your ballot will be remade along with those already cast and your votes accurately recorded on a new ballot by a team of Republican and Democratic election judges.  Your old ballot will be preserved and marked in a way that will allow it to be matched with the new ballot.  The secrecy of your vote will not be violated as the judges charged with remaking ballots will not know who cast the ballots they remake.

We have 517 people running for 254 offices on the Consolidated Election ballot on April 7th.  The list is here.