Jan 23, 2008 8:01 pm US/Central
Officials Get OK on Hastert Special Election
CHICAGO (AP) ―
Organizing two special elections to fill the congressional seat vacated by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has been a "logistical nightmare," a DuPage County election official said Wednesday.
But Robert Saar, executive director of the county's election commission, said now that an abbreviated timetable has received a federal judge's approval, he's confident voters will feel they're being treated equally across the congressional district.
Hastert, a Republican, resigned in November from his seat representing the 14th congressional district, which stretches west from Chicago to the Mississippi River.
During the upcoming Feb. 5 primary, voters in the district will cast two separate ballots: one in a special primary to choose a candidate in a race to fill the rest of Hastert's term, which runs until January 2009, and another in the general primary to replace him.
The special election to choose someone to fill out Hastert's term will be held March 8. The general election to replace him is in November.
The small window of time between the special primary and special election made it impossible for officials to meet statutory requirements on a number of issues related to absentee ballots, nominating petitions and canvassing of election results.
"It is a logistical nightmare. People are essentially running two elections at the same time," Saar said.
The initial fear, Saar said, was that each election board in which voters are entitled to cast ballots would handle the deadlines differently.
So election officials from DuPage, Kane, Bureau, DeKalb, Kendall, Lee and Henry counties and the city of Aurora worked together to come up with a new timeline, then filed a lawsuit this month seeking federal court approval.
U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo sanctioned the new timetable in an order filed Friday, then dismissed the lawsuit.
The court's ruling, Saar said, "averted what would have been or could have been a disaster in the sense of having multiple lawsuits filed either by candidates that didn't prevail or voters who felt that their rights were abridged."
Kane County Clerk John Cunningham agreed, saying "the nightmare has turned into a bad dream." Still, he's worried whether state election officials will get the special February primary certified in time for overseas absentee ballots to be printed and mailed out for the March election.
Many of the timetable changes are behind-the-scenes details only of interest to election officials or candidates.
For regular voters, the most important change affects absentee ballots. During a regular election, officials continue to accept absentee ballots for 14 days after an election, as long as they are postmarked the day before the election or earlier.
For the special primary and special general election, absentee ballots -- as long as they are postmarked at least the day before the election -- will only be accepted for three days after the election.
So voters casting absentee ballots, Saar said, "shouldn't wait until the last minute to mail their ballot back to the election authority."
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