Election czar: Geils' delay 'catastrophic' to DuPage Co.
DuPage County's election czar said it would be "catastrophic" for the entire election if a decision on Bensenville Village President John Geils' candidacy isn't reached until mid-March.
"It would affect the entire county, not just Bensenville," Election Commission Executive Director Robert Saar said. "From our standpoint, we need a decision now."
A March 16 court date was set Wednesday for the two sides to argue whether the village's electoral board is comprised of biased pro-Geils supporters. That three-member body voted unanimously last week to keep Geils on the ballot.
If Judge Bonnie Wheaton rules the board was biased, she will be asked to decide Geils' fate or create a new, independent electoral board to hear the case again. Geils' opponents accuse him of not living at his Bensenville address.
The scheduled hearing date is also the first day of early voting. Geils' name already appears on ballots being shipped overseas and will be on absentee ballots that are available starting today.
The touch-screen electronic voting machines employed en masse during early voting, Saar said. It would be impossible to change the ballot once the machines are programmed because all the security codes are tied together. The ballots couldn't be changed for just Election Day, either, because the election commission's tabulating system uses the same codes that are in place for early voting.
Saar said this is the worst type of election for this problem to take place because of the sheer volume of races and candidates involved in local elections.
The election commission runs tests on all the electronic equipment prior to set up at early voting sites sprinkled throughout the county, and information from the actual ballot is used to test the machines. The testing takes several days and is done at the commission's storage facility in Aurora.
Geils is seeking his seventh term as Bensenville's elected head. He is being challenged by Frank Soto, the man Geils defeated eight years ago as a write-in candidate. In that election, Soto successfully had Geils removed from the ballot on other objections.
The delay is caused by courthouse procedure. Judge Wheaton ordered transcripts from the nearly 8-hour long electoral board hearing to be completed by Friday. The two sides agreed to a March 3 date for Timothy Martin, attorney for Geil's objector, to file his objections to the electoral board findings. Electoral board attorney Phil Luetkehans has six days to respond; Martin then has three days to reply, which then gives Wheaton four days before the hearing to digest everything.
As for Geils, if Wheaton rules that he is not a resident of the village he would not be able to run as a write-in candidate and he could be stripped of his seat immediately, election law experts said.