Politics

Local Voter Turnout High, But Not Record-Breaking

Only A Few Problems Reported At Polling Places

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Chicago and Cook County election officials Tuesday night said voter turnout was high, but not record-breaking as they had hoped.

As CBS 2's Pam Zekman reports, about four hours after polls closed, the Chicago Board of Elections officials reported a voter turnout of 51 percent, which is the highest since the 1992 presidential primary.

Cook County Clerk David Orr said voter turnout in suburban Cook County was also impressive.

"I'm going to go ahead and guess that we're going to get 41 percent, which for a primary in suburban Cook is very good," Orr said. "We had 40 percent way back in 1992 when Bill Clinton was a young candidate at that time. It was pretty good, which I think it would have been significantly higher had we not had the rain at 4 o'clock."

Orr added that voter transmission was going well, with problems only arising from those precincts that were using electronic voting equipment for the first time.

"Eighty-five percent or so by the 10 o'clock news – that's pretty darn good," Orr said.

Only scattered problems were reported during the election, the most severe of which involved a fight between election judges that came to actual blows.

Chicago Police were called to a West Side polling place Tuesday morning when two female election judges reportedly got into a fight, leaving one injured and one in police custody.

The incident occurred about 10:50 a.m. at 600 W. Washington Blvd., according to News Affairs Officer Laura Kubiak.

An altercation turned physical between two female judges when one judge, in her 50s, was struck in the face by Evon McAllister, 37, of 2800 block of West Jackson Boulevard, police News Affairs Officer Tom Polick said, unable to comment on what started the fight.

McAllister was charged with one count of misdemeanor battery.

Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen reported that virtually all of the city's 2,500-plus polling places (all but nine) opened on time, with only minor problems reported-- one Downtown site opened late when four of five judges were no-shows, and one North Side site opened late because of miscommunication with a bank security guard. All of the delays in poll opening were less than 20 minutes, he said.

The only exception was in the 35th Ward, 28th Precinct on the Northwest Side, where voting equipment was delivered to the wrong address. The Election Board petitioned a court to allow that polling site to stay open an extra hour, until 8 p.m., because of the delay, Allen said.

Additionally, a handful of Chicago voters were told incorrectly that they could cast their ballots in invisible ink.

Voters filling out paper ballots at a Chicago precinct were given styluses used for touchscreen voting instead of ink pens, Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen said. When the voters indicated they couldn't mark their ballots, they were told the pens used invisible ink.

"The voters believed that and when they cast their ballots the machines spit them out, and the judge overrode it," Allen said. "As far as we can tell, he believed it."

After 20 people experienced the same problem, "somebody said, 'Wait, we've got 20 ballots where nobody's voted for anything,"' Allen said.

By late afternoon, officials had contacted five of the 20 voters and were waiting to hear from the others. 

Chicago Board of Elections Chairman Langdon Neal talked with CBS 2 about the fiasco.

Holding up one of the styluses, Neal said, "This is not a pen. It has no ink. It has no lead. So, the voters were told to mark the paper ballot with this utensil. As a result there was nothing on the ballot. The judges then told the voters that that was OK because it was invisible ink. They then put it in the equipment, the equipment worked right, rejected the ballot as an unmarked ballot, a blank ballot. The judges then pushed the override button."

When asked if he thought this was somehow a malicious mistake Neal said, "We did send investigators out to make sure there was no malicious intent and we are convinced that it was just utter stupidity."

In suburban Cook County, one of the precincts did not open until 7:15 a.m. because a poll workers failed to show up and the other, at a school, did not open until about 7 a.m., apparently because a door could not be unlocked until then.

Orr noted small problems at a handful of other precincts, such as judges mistakenly closing a poll -- essentially turning off a voting machine -- and the system not allowing it to be reopened. New machines were rushed to the polling places.

"We don't think we lost any voters," Orr said.

In DuPage County, the biggest snafu occurred at the Career School in West Chicago, where judges were turning voters away under the belief that the necessary Republican ballots had not been delivered to the precinct, according to Doreen Nelson, assistant executive director of the DuPage County Election Committee. She was unsure as of late Tuesday morning what would be done to remedy that situation.

In Kane County, all precincts opened on time at 6 a.m. and authorities faced only a few small problems, most due to human error, according to Kane County Clerk John Cunningham.

That changed quickly as a variety of problems started popping up, with voters reporting a variety of problems with ballots at Aurora polling places. The Aurora Election Commission reports a flood of calls with election complaints ranging from faulty ballots to untrained and/or rude election judges to shoddy accommodations for handicapped people at one polling station to precincts only providing federal ballots, preventing residents from picking candidates in local races.

Aurora resident Claire Keasler told the Beacon News she wanted to vote for her mother, Arlene Shoemaker, a candidate for precinct committeeman. But at her polling place at the Methodist church on Fourth Street, no local races appeared on Keasler's ballot. She voted for president, but was told by an election judge and later the Aurora Election Commission that she could only vote once, eliminating the chance to vote for her mother.

"It's very frustrating," Keasler said. "How can you send the wrong ballot (to the polling place)? I just think this is wrong and everybody should know about it."

The Aurora Election Commission was swamped with calls throughout the day, many answered by an automated message stating the mailbox "is full," and not accepting new messages.
In Lake County, some of the precinct transfer stations used to transmit voting information from the polling places were not working properly, County Administrator Barry Burton said.

Burton said the decision was made to manually drive the ballot results from all precinct polling places to the County Building in Waukegan, a process that was complicated by the beginnings of a winter storm.

Downstate, McLean County Clerk PeggyAnn Milton said voting in the central Illinois county anchored by Bloomington had gone smoothly, with only a few minor problems. An optical scan voting machine went out in a rural part of the county but was fixed quickly.

She did note a quirk in the county's ballot colors: yellow for Republicans, green for Democrats and blue for the Green Party. She said local election officials may talk about changing the color scheme after the primary.

CBS 2's Pam Zekman, the Associated Press and the STNG Wire contributed to this report.

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