I noted a couple months ago that I believed that Rahm Emanuel would have “no problem” winning the case challenging his residency in Chicago.  It’s looking like I was correct.

It’s unfortunate for Mr. Emanuel, and the electoral process in general, that this case had to go this far.  The hearing officer’s decision reflects the broad consensus of election law experts in Illinois.  A modicum of work by the media could have presented a more accurate presentation of the law in this issue.  Instead, they used most of their ink citing Burt Odelson, who was clearly biased.

The opinion as issued makes an excellent case that the key element here was whether Emanuel had an intent to return.  He clearly did as anyone with any sense could see.  While helpful to Emanuel, the fact that he was a federal employee was not necessary for him to make the case that he was a resident for that time period.

This case is relevant in Champaign County as we often have faculty who leave the county for extended periods of time.  As I stated before, I think it’s clear that they do not give up their residency.

Unaddressed by Morris was the legal question of whether the definition of “residence” in the Election Code, for purposes of voting, is different than the definition of residence for the purposes of running for office.  I believe this is settled, which is probably why Morris didn’t address it.   I’d cite the Baumgartner decision in particular.

Both parties have submitted differing usages of the term “residence.” However, because  eligibility to run for office is closely linked to the ability to vote within a particular jurisdiction, we will use the definition of “residence” as used within the Election Code for voter registration.

Expect an appeal on this issue, if for no other reason than the attorneys challenging Emanuel seem more interested in publicity than in offering up sound legal analysis.

I’ve written a few times about the new MOVE act that sought to improve the voting process for military and overseas voters.   It was well intended, and probably accomplished quite a bit.  But as with any law, it seems, the goals of the drafters were largely unmet.

The first problem was the well documented failure of many jurisdictions across the country to comply with the acts provisions.  With a year to prepare, these failures were inexcusable and largely preventable.

But the provision that I have been following that I believe has received too little attention is the emailing of ballots.

For most people with access to email, it seems to be the answer to most of our needs for speed and effiency.  However, the voting of a secret ballot makes email problematic.  So while we had a number of our FPCA voters request their ballots through email, I always had doubts about whether the process would work well.

For this first election, it seems to have fallen short of expectations for Champaign County.   For this election, we had 213 voters who requested a ballot through email and 583 who requested it through regular mail.  We had a 27% return rate for the email ballots and a 40% return rate for mail ballots.  For military voters, who seemed to be the primary focus of the law, we had 16 out of 41 email ballots returned (28%) against 93 out of 155 mail ballots returned (38%).

From our side of this, it’s easy to see why.  While the email can sound good, in practice it’s not easy.  In the ideal scenario, you would need a printer that could print two different size envelopes as well as a ballot on legal size paper.  Realistically, few people have the larger size transmittal envelope and many don’t even have access to legal paper.  In order to avoid mailing charges, you need to print a special logo on the envelope that is mailed to our office.  Regardless of your ability to have the preferred envelopes and paper, your ballot will need to be remade in our office.

I’m certain that a fair number of people who selected the email method came to find it frustrating and perhaps gave up.  It will be interesting to see how many people switch their preferences for future elections.

It also speaks to the benefits of certifying our ballot even sooner.   There were unnecessary delays at the state level that hopefully will be worked out in the coming years.  By mailing and emailing ballots sooner, we give voters extra time to change their delivery method if they find their first choice to not be good for them.

Overall, I’d call the new law a success for Champaign County voters in the military or overseas.

This is our tenth election using the new optical scan voting system.  By most accounts, the system is working extremely well.

Illinois law requires that after every election, we retabulate the ballots in 5% of the precincts as selected by the State Board of Elections.  In our office, we have extended that retabulation to include a manual hand count of ballots in select races.

The results have been gratifying.  In every instance, where we have found a discrepancy between the machine count on election day and the machine count during the retabulation, we have been able to point to particular ballots that were the source the discrepancy, usually a voter marking the ballot with an X instead of filling in the oval.

Such was the case in 3 precincts from this last election.  Clearly identifiable ballots had improper markings that caused a discrepancy between the counts.  For example, you can see in Mahomet 1 the ballot that was marked with a complete vote for Eric Thorsland for County Board at the same time that the voter darkened the edge of the oval for Stephanie Holderfield.  That darkened edge didn’t register on election day, but did in the retabulation, causing an overvote.

However, for the first time, we had two ballots, in Mahomet 5, which alternately counted as overvotes for three offices, as unreadable, or correctly.  After identifying the ballots we continued to run them in a variety of orientations and failed to ever get a consistent outcome.

Examination of the ballots, which you can view on our website, doesn’t show us anything odd about them.  It was part of the same group of 808 other ballots that we received from our printer for that ballot style.  We also tried the ballots in a different tabulator and received the same odd results.  It remains a mystery to us.

To date, we’ve reviewed thousands of ballots by hand.  In fact, with the large number of discovery recounts we’ve done, the number is probably over 10,000.  This is the first time we’ve run across this problem.  It’s such a rare thing, with apparently no way to replicate, that I’m not sure I could even venture a guess as to how to prepare for or prevent it in the future.

But it does speak to the value of redundant counts of ballots and mandatory recounts in the event of close races.

Complete results here.