Attorney helping write-in candidate pursue election answers
A DuPage recorder candidate who claimed the county's voting machines cost him thousands of votes during the March Democratic primary has hired an attorney to seek answers from election officials.
Moon Khan pursued a write-in campaign seeking to become the Democratic Party's nominee to face Republican Recorder Fred Bucholz in the November general election. No other Democrat was seeking the nomination.
To get the nomination, the Lombard resident needed 844 write-in votes in the March 15 primary. He ended up with just 699, according to unofficial results, even though more than 4,000 Democrats voted for the recorder's position.
Khan is claiming that "a suspected software malfunction" prevented him from receiving up to 3,405 additional write-in votes.
Robert Saar, executive director of the DuPage County Election Commission, responded by saying there's "absolutely no possibility" that there was a problem with the voting machines. However, he said his office doesn't have the legal authority to do a probe to find out what happened.
Khan said he is now being represented by attorney Andrew Finko, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Thursday seeking documents from the election commission.
Finko said he wants to know if the commission programmed and tested the machines to ensure they read and recorded write-in votes correctly. He also wants to know what process was used to collect, review and determine the validity of write-in ballots that were cast on the electronic voting machines.
"I'm going to try to get as much as I can to find out what really happened," Finko said. "I find it absolutely beyond belief to think (3,405) voters either could not spell the word 'Moon' or somehow wrote 'Mickey Mouse' or something else."
Finko also said the machines should have been programed to prevent voters from accidentally voting for a write-in candidate without specifying the name of that candidate.
Meanwhile, Khan said he's been contacted by several well-known activists, including Bev Harris of the elections watchdog group Black Box Voting.
Khan said he wants DuPage election officials to do an investigation - even if takes a court order to require them to do so.
"I hope they give respect to the 3,200 people who voted for me," Khan said. "Ultimately, they can declare me the winner."