From the Beacon News:

Judge extends polling hours
Extra 90 minutes: State's attorney worries about disenfranchising many voters

November 8, 2006
By MATT HANLEY Staff Writer

GENEVA — With barely two hours until Kane County polls were scheduled to close Tuesday, Judge F. Keith Brown rubbed his head, squinted, then admitted he had a tough decision to make.

Facing confirmed reports of problems in nearly one-quarter of Kane County polling places, Brown chose to keep the polls open an extra 90 minutes on Election Day. The problems were blamed on both voting-machine and human error.

“Going to the voting booth is one of the fundamental rights of our society and one we must protect at all costs,” Brown said after making his ruling. “Sometimes we need to bend over backwards.”

According to the judge’s ruling, all the ballots cast between 7 p.m. — the time polls were scheduled to close — and 8:30 p.m. would be counted as provisional votes. That means their validity can be challenged at a later date.

The ruling did not affect votes in the city of Aurora, where the election is handled by the Aurora Election Commission. Voters in Kendall, DuPage and Will counties did not report any serious problems, and voting there closed at normal times.

Brown’s ruling came after widespread reports of problems with machines malfunctioning and election workers failing to open doors on time in Kane County. According to the Kane County clerk’s office, at least 65 of the 223 precincts were unable to open at 6 a.m., and another 19 were not open until after 7:30 a.m.

In the most dramatic example, a Dundee precinct was not able to allow voters to cast ballots until 10:35 a.m. after election workers smelled smoke coming out of at least one of the voting machines.

“We determined that it was more fair and consistent to offer (extended hours) to the county as a whole rather than be selective,” Chief Deputy Clerk Jay Bennett testified.

Lawsuit filed Poll watchers from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund said they spotted problems at many largely Hispanic precincts early in the morning and started to work on getting a court order, the only way to extend voting hours.

Early Tuesday afternoon, the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights filed an emergency lawsuit asking that certain precincts that had confirmed delays remain open. At about the same time, Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham asked that voting hours be extended at all Kane County precincts.

Shortly after 4 p.m., a 50-minute emergency hearing began during which Bennett testified to the myriad challenges facing the clerk’s office.

The reports of problems started early and appeared to be spread across nearly every region of the county. Polls in Batavia, Aurora Township, Geneva, St. Charles, Big Rock, Dundee, Elgin, Hampshire and others reported opening late or experiencing problems that forced the polls to close within two hours of when the booths first opened at 6 a.m.

Complicating the mechanical and human problems were communication issues. Election workers at all the precincts were issued cell phones that, for reasons still unclear Tuesday evening, did not work, Bennett said. With the phones out of order, the clerk’s office used secondary land lines to communicate with their poll workers.

But when the hearing started at 4 p.m., the clerk’s office was still unable to get in touch with 46 precincts — so they were not sure if those locations had opened on time or experienced voting difficulties.

For that reason, Kane County State’s Attorney John Barsanti asked that all the voting booths remain open until 9:30 p.m. “What we’re talking about is disenfranchisement,” Barsanti said. “And the problem is we can’t vote again on Thursday.”

Extension protested Appearing on behalf of state Senate candidates Terri Ann Wintermute and Billie Roth, attorney Phil Luetkehans protested the extended hours. Luetkehans said extending the hours was “overkill” because there were only two confirmed reports of people who would not be able to vote because polls opened slowly.

Judge Brown originally considered leaving just the polls with confirmed problems open. But because no one was able to verify if there were problems at the unaccounted-for polling places and a partial extension might cause more problems, Brown was forced to keep the extension uniform.

It was not clear Tuesday evening what, if any, affect the extended hours would have on the outcome of various races. But many people were critical of how the election was handled.

“The clerk of the county has many questions to answer about how this happened,” said Gabriel Fuentes, a lawyer representing the Illinois Coalition. “What kind of preparation was done for an important election?”