2 win DuPage GOP committeeman races after vote recount

Two Republican precinct committeeman candidates on Wednesday were declared winners of last month's primary after a court-ordered recount found errors in the vote totals compiled by the DuPage Election Commission.

Five write-in candidates for GOP precinct committeeman posts in Wayne Township sought the recount after initial results from the commission showed them getting votes from only a fraction of the ballots cast - even though they were running unopposed.

The recount found two of those five - Joan Mruk and Jeff Posadzy - actually received enough votes to win their seats. The other three candidates still fell short.

The errors in the Mruk and Posadzy cases apparently resulted from election judges improperly counting write-in votes submitted on paper ballots, officials said.

In Mruk's precinct, 47 Republicans cast votes for the committeeman position, but she initially received credit for just four.

During Wednesday's recount, it was determined Mruk actually received 31 write-in votes. She needed 10 to be elected.

It initially was thought Posadzy received just two votes during the March 15 primary. But it turned out he received 12 - two more than he needed.

Joseph Sobecki, assistant executive director of the election commission, said it appears some election judges simply failed to count all the votes Mruk and Posadzy received on paper ballots.

"They (election judges) went through the paper ballots and didn't tally for those candidates," Sobecki said.

He said election judges will get additional training to avoid such problems in the future.

Former state Rep. Randy Ramey, who supported Mruk's and Posadzy's write-in campaigns, said he was pleased with the outcome.

"The process worked to the extent that we had the ability to go in and look at them (the ballots)," Ramey said. "Now two people who worked at this are elected committeemen."

The recount request came just a week after Moon Khan, a Democrat who ran unopposed as a write-in candidate for county recorder in his party's March 15 primary, blamed the county's voting machines for costing him thousands of votes.

Khan pursued his write-in campaign seeking to become the Democratic Party's nominee to face Republican Recorder Fred Bucholz in the November general election.

To get the nomination, the Lombard resident needed 844 write-in votes. Election officials said he got just 699, even though more than 4,100 Democrats voted for the recorder's position.

On Wednesday, Khan said he's working to get a court order to force the election commission to do a recount in his race.