From the Tribune (Editorial):

David Orr's fiasco

Published November 9, 2006

Cook County Clerk David Orr has lots of pedestrian responsibilities--and one that's very important. He's in charge of ensuring elections run smoothly in suburban Cook County.

But for the second election in a row, he has failed. A chaotic operation Tuesday created confusion for voters during the day and bred suspicion from candidates during the night.

Polling places didn't have enough pens needed to mark the optical scanner paper ballots. Some election judges didn't know, or didn't bother to know, how to offer the option of touch-screen voting. This created confusion and delays.

Near midnight--five hours after the polls closed--not quite half of the vote had been counted and reported from suburban Cook precincts. The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which used the same technology, had reported 83 percent of precincts by that time.

That limbo--where's the suburban vote?--sparked fear and suspicion from the campaigns of Todd Stroger and Tony Peraica, the candidates for Cook County Board president. By 1:30 a.m., Orr's downtown offices were under siege from Stroger and Peraica supporters. And who could blame them? Given Cook County's history of vote fraud, suspicion was natural.

Cook County's $50-million-plus investment in election technology promised to improve speed, security and accuracy of voting. Instead, it has invited more distrust, suspicion and cynicism.

Suburban Cook voting officials had particular trouble transmitting electronic totals from at least 1,100 of the 2,370 suburban Cook precincts. After similar snafus in the March primary election, the clerk's office beefed up backup transmission centers around the suburban area. Even those failed.

More than four hours after the polls closed Tuesday, election officials ordered that results that couldn't be transmitted electronically would be be transported by law enforcement escort to the central office downtown.

What was everybody doing for those four hours? Who was in control of the voting cartridges? Why did the city's backup system for transmitting results work better?

Orr on Wednesday vowed to launch an investigation into what went wrong. One of his top assistants described him as "extremely upset" by the continued problems.

What's to be upset about? Orr won re-election, apparently with 73 percent of the vote.

We say "apparently," because late Wednesday there were still 170 suburban precincts that hadn't been reported.