In Champaign County, for local candidates seeking nomination or election at the March 20, 2012 Primary, only one objection to nomination papers was filed – that of Stephen Frank vs Stephanie Holderfield, Republican candidate for Circuit Clerk.  The objection alleged that Holderfield, a Republican candidate, had signed a nominating petition for Ben Carlson, a Democratic candidate for Auditor, and thereby invalidated her own nomination papers.  You can read the objection in its entirety here.

The objection was heard by the County Officials Electoral Board, in accordance with 10 ILCS 5/10-8, through 10-10.1.  The Electoral Board is created by statute to hear such objections, and consists of the State’s Attorney, Circuit Clerk and County Clerk as Chair, or their designated representatives.  For this Board, the members were State’s Attorney Julia Rietz, Circuit Clerk’s Supervisor Sandy Romans (as designated by Circuit Clerk Linda Frank) and myself.

The Electoral Board met twice, on December 16, 2011 and January 6, 2012, to consider the issues in the objection.  There was an initial Motion to Recuse from the candidate due to alleged bias of Board Member Romans and myself, which was denied.

I want to share some of the record of the proceedings here for public comment and feedback.

The candidate submitted to the Board both a Response and a Brief, with affidavits from Stephanie Holderfield and Todd Holderfield attached as exhibits.

The objector, in addition to the original objection, submitted a Brief, with five exhibits (A, B, C, D and E).

The Board ruled on a 3-0 vote to deny the objection, and the Board’s Findings are here.

The two court cases referenced by the Findings are Watkins v Burke (1984) and Rosenzweig v State Board of Elections, Hebda (2011).

If you have feedback about the issues in the case, how we heard it, or my role in it, please let me know.  Thank you.

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day.  Our office is closed to honor the service and sacrifices of our veterans, which makes possible the very freedoms that allow us to conduct elections and chose our Federal, State and local leaders.

This is also an appropriate time to recognize that those currently serving in our military face unique challenges in voting, and that we have an obligation to make voting as convenient and secure for our soldiers, sailors, and other service members as possible.  The 2012 General Election is now less than one year away, and we are now accepting requests for 2012 absentee ballots from military and overseas voters.

Military and overseas voters can submit a request for an absentee ballot by completing the application available online.   Once completed, the form may be returned to our office by mail, email, or fax.  The form does not need to be notarized.  This form will then be effective for both elections in 2012.

Immediate family members of active duty service members may, in some circumstances, also be able to submit absentee ballot requests on behalf of service members.  Voters or family members with questions may contact us by commenting on this blog post, by calling us at 217-384-3724, or by email at mail@champaigncountyclerk.com.

Thank you again to all our veterans for their service.  Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to facilitate your voting.

After canvassing today, and after counting 22 additional ballots (16 late-arriving absentees and 6 accepted provisional ballots), we have updated the results from the April 5 Consolidated General Election.  These results are final, have been certified as such and have been transmitted to the State Board of Elections.    We have some tasks remaining for this election, but we have already begun planning for the March 20, 2012 General Primary election.

An important piece of those preparations is a post-election evaluation that we will conduct over the next several weeks.  During an election, we ask election judges, workers, our staff and voters for feedback and suggestions.  We will go through this information as a staff, often in consultation with election judges and election day coordinators, review our procedures, and begin to implement changes almost immediately in some cases.

To assist us in better evaluating our elections administration and to help us improve your voting experience, please let us know your suggestions, ideas and criticisms.  Of course, we’d also like to know if you had a positive experience or want to share a complimentary story about an election judge, worker or our staff.  We’ll include all of these comments with the other information we consider when evaluating how we can serve you better.  You can share your feedback here in comments, by calling us (384-3724), by email, on Facebook or Twitter.

Thank you.

In accordance with 10 ILCS 5/24B-15, we conducted our state-mandated retabulation this morning.  Retabulation is a post-election verification of the results we reported on election night.  After each election, the Illinois State Board of Elections randomly selects five percent of Champaign County’s precincts (usually six of our 117 precincts) for retabulation.  It is open to the public and media, and the leaders of the Democratic, Green and Republican Parties are invited.  Retabulation consists of re-testing the tabulators used in each precinct polling place on election day, verifying the test results, and then re-scanning and tabulating all of the early/absentee ballots that were cast in our office, and all of the ballots that were cast in the precinct on election day.  We check to ensure that the total number of ballots cast is the same on election day and on retabulation day.  We also perform a hand count of one race in each of the six precincts, with each established party choosing the race to hand count in two precincts.  Retabulation verifies that counting the same ballots in the same tabulator a second time gives the same results.

The precincts selected by the State Board for retabulation after the April 5, 2011 Consolidated General Election were  Ayers, City of Champaign 35, Cunningham 23, Mahomet 1, Mahomet 3 and Sadorus Ivesdale.  You can view the retabulation results here.

In five of the six precincts, the results of our retabulation and hand count exactly matched the unofficial results we reported on election night.  In Mahomet 3, as you can see here, we had two early/absentee ballots that had been correctly tabulated at the office but that could not be correctly tabulated by the machine in the precinct.  These ballots were counted and reported on election night, but because of how they were marked (with Xs in one case, with pencil in the other) the precinct tabulator would not read them.  We copied the ballots, explained the issue, and included them with our report to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

We will count late-arriving absentee ballots and accepted provisional ballots on Tuesday, April 19 for our final canvass.  After those results are included in our totals from election night, our results will be final and official.

Please share with us any comments, concerns, suggestions or complaints about your experience voting today.  Thank you.

From a press release we issued this morning:

Champaign County Clerk Gordy Hulten announced that absentee voting for the upcoming April 5th Consolidated General Election is now open at the County Clerk’s Office.    “We encourage anyone who cannot vote at their assigned polling place on Election Day, April 5, 2011 to make every effort to absentee vote in the Clerk’s Office,” said Hulten.  The office is located at 1776 East Washington Street in Urbana.

Absentee voting is now available to all Champaign County registered voters. No excuse is necessary.  Applications for absentee ballots may be made by mail or a registered voter may vote absentee in person in the office of the County Clerk, 1776 East Washington St., Urbana 61802.   If voting in person an absentee applicant’s identity must be verified by presentation of an Illinois driver’s license, Illinois ID card, or another government issued ID containing the applicant’s photograph.

Voters needing to vote absentee by mail may request an application for an absentee ballot by calling our office, mail, fax, through our web site (www.champaigncountyclerk.com), or by email. Requests should be made well in advance of the election in order to ensure enough time for delivery. Voters may contact the Clerk’s office at 217-384-3724 or visit the Clerk’s website at www.champaigncountyclerk.com.

The Consolidated General Election (on April 5, 2011 this year) is the most complicated election we administer.  Turnout is a little lower than a General Primary or General Election, but a few issues create unique challenges for our office for this election.  The first is that candidates file or caucus with their local election jurisdiction, rather than with our office, so we get information regarding who is running for which offices from our Local Election Officials (LEOs) – City & Village Clerks; School, Community College, Library, Park and Fire Protection District Board secretaries.  Our LEOs do a fantastic job, but administering election law is a complex process they face only once every two years.  Inevitably, changing laws and a general unfamiliarity with the process cause lots of confusion and lots of questions.

The second complication is the sheer number of jurisdictions and the myriad ways in which they interlock create the need for more than 270 different ballots just for Champaign County.  We have precincts that, because of the way the different districts overlap voters’ residences, will have nine different ballots cast in their precinct for April’s election.  Creating and managing all these different ballots is a challenge not only for our office, but for our Election Judges in the precincts on Election Day as well.

The third complication is that the April 5, 2011 Consolidated General occurs so soon after the February 22, 2011 Consolidated Primary.  Luckily, we had only one race in Champaign County for the Primary, and it wasn’t a close result.  If we had more races, or any results had been in question, it would have limited our ability to open voting for all voters this early.  The preparations for the Consolidated Primary and Consolidated General also overlap to a great degree, and that is a complicating factor as well.

Regardless of the challenges, we are proud that absentee voting is now open, and hope you will take advantage of this increasingly convenient method of voting.

For the February 22, 2011 Consolidated Primary Election, which in Champaign County includes just one contest (a Democratic Primary for Alderman in Urbana’s Ward 2), in-person and by-mail absentee voting has begun.

To vote in person, please come to our office, at 1776 E. Washington in Urbana.

To vote by mail, you can request ballots either by calling our office at 217-384-3720, or by submitting a request online.

More detailed instructions for voting absentee are here.  Please email or call if you have any questions, and if you live in Urbana’s Ward 2, please remember to vote.

Last month, I posted the results of our retab and hand count, and noted that there was an unexplained glitch.  We didn’t drop the issue and now I’m prepared to give some details on what we found out.

First, I want to thank ES&S who came in to our office to do a thorough examination of the ballots in question and proceed to determine what went wrong.  They found the problem.

What stood out on the problem ballots was the rather bold and big initials by the election judge.  At the same time, those same initials were on hundreds of other ballots in the precinct without causing any problem.

ES&S used a “Graphic Dump” on the M100 to show exactly what was being read in each oval on the ballot. What that graphic dump showed was that for the ballots in question, when placed in the machine top first, the M100 read not the area within the oval, but rather the area to the left.  That area to the left corresponds to the place on the top of the ballot where the judge’s initials go within the area that contains the column timing bars.

Essentially what appears to have happened is that when the judge’s initials cross into the timing area within a very limited range and at a very limited angle (that is, very horizontal), that extra line is being read as one of the column timing bars.  No one at ES&S had seen this before, and it is odd enough that it is unlikely that its cropped up many times before.  At the same time, I’d be surprised if we were the first people to witness this.

Taking this information, we decided to have some fun and see if we could design some ballots that would misread but still count votes.   The problem on election day and in the retab did not result in votes being cast incorrectly, but rather in either an unreadable ballot or overvote.

You can see a ballot that we designed as well as the results tape.   We then put the line at the top in the timing area to replicate the error.  If you look at the results tape, you can see that while we filled in the oval for Ed Ott both times on race 4, the machine read those votes as votes for Blankenship because instead of picking up the filled in oval, it picked up instead the words in the candidate name in the column to the left.

As I said, this is a very unique set of circumstances.  Nevertheless, we’ll be changing instructions to judges about the initials crossing into the timing area to prevent it from happening again.

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.