From the Tribune:

Election Day chaos rocks Kane County

By William Presecky
Tribune staff reporter
Published November 7, 2006, 10:56 PM CST

Polling-place snafus caused Election Day chaos Tuesday in Kane County's first major test of its new electronic voting machines, forcing an emergency court hearing in which a judge ordered all 223 voting precincts to stay open until 8:30 p.m., an hour and a half past scheduled closing.

Election Day headaches were caused mainly by election judges' unfamiliarity with the county's new electronic eSlate voting system, and a cell-phone system meltdown intensified the havoc.

To complicate matters further, Circuit Court Judge F. Keith Brown ruled in the afternoon hearing that all votes cast after 7 p.m. would be considered provisional, meaning that they would not be counted until challenges of the judge's order are exhausted.

Even with the earlier confusion, results began pouring in at about 10 p.m. With 94 percent of the vote counted, including Aurora, the race for sheriff was neck-and-neck between Republican Kevin Williams and Democrat Pat Perez. There apparently were no upsets in the making in the 13 races for County Board seats.

Kane County Clerk John "Jack" Cunningham, who was seeking re-election and who had built his campaign around ushering the county into the new electronic voting age, was leading 54 percent to 46 percent over Democrat Annie Collins in his bid fora second term.

Still, the day belonged to the voting snafus, which Cunningham tried to explain earlier in the day.

"We went to a new training program and [election judges] just didn't open [the polls] properly. The electronic equipment was confusing to them," Cunningham said.

"Problems arose from judges not knowing how to run the car," he said.

The emergency order was issued at the request of Kane County State's Atty. John Barsanti, after it became apparent early Tuesday that voting was not able to start in numerous precincts when polls were opened at 6 a.m., he said.

Cunningham cited specific problems. In one precinct, he said, a worker booted up the main computer but failed to push the "enter" button on others, then assumed they were broken.

In another precinct, which ended up opening at 10:35 a.m., someone from the polling place called the main office saying the election machinery "smelled like hot electronics." That machine ended up working fine, Cunningham said.

Attorneys for two civic groups and for groups of candidates from the Republican and Democratic Parties took part in Tuesday's 4 p.m. hearing. They sought a range of actions, from doing nothing to extending voting hours for varying lengths of time and to only select precincts.

Brown said he ruled in favor of uniformity rather than ordering a hybrid remedy that might be confusing to voters as well as election judges.

The two civic groups, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, railed against Brown's order.

"You had 10 precincts with a lot of Latino voters, where there were clear problems," coalition Executive Director Joshua Hoyt said. The group argued that the 10 precincts should have stayed open, but not the entire county, a decision they said smacked of partisan politics.

Once the order was handed down, Kane County faced another predicament. Some cell phones ordered for election judges weren't working, and back-up lines at polling places weren't available, meaning that about 50 county employees had to rush out and hand-deliver Brown's order in advance of the scheduled 7 p.m. closing.

According to information presented at Tuesday's court hearing, 65 precincts became operational at various times between 6:05 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., Barsanti said. Voting began on time in 111 of Kane's 223 precincts. When voting began in 47 other precincts could not be determined because of the cell phone problems.

Tuesday's court order did not apply to 80 precincts in Kane County precincts under the jurisdiction of the Aurora Election Commission, which uses optical scanning voting machines.

Kane County voters, meanwhile, responded to the late start and late finish of voting with mixed feelings.

"Yeah, it was an inconvenience, said Ed Butts of Geneva. "I was here this morning, and none of the electronic machines was working and I had to go to work," said Butts, who returned to Coultrap School in the city at about 4 p.m. to vote.

Tribune freelance reporters Kate Hawley, Gary Gibula and David Sharos contributed to this report.

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