DuPage, Aurora having ballot problems

DuPage County is among more than two dozen Illinois counties reporting problems on Tuesday with ballots that are too large and not fitting into scanning machines.

State election officials said Aurora, which has its own election commission, was having similar problems with oversized ballots.

Jane Gasperin of the Illinois State Board of Elections said some polling places experienced problems loading ballots into the scanners, because they were printed marginally too large or askew. Not all ballots were problematic, she added.

The affected counties had ballots supplied by Liberty Systems and Governmental Business Systems, which Gasperin said “seem to have the same printer.”

In DuPage, Gasperin said about 300 total ballots were affected. Officials from the DuPage County Election Commission said those ballots came from 23 of DuPage County’s 360 voting locations.

New ballots were immediately ordered and distributed to the affected DuPage locations by about 1 p.m. Tuesday, said officials.

“Past that time, new ballots were in place and there should not be any problem going forward,” said Dan Curry, DuPage County Election Commission spokesman.

In DuPage, affected ballots will be remade by hand into new ballots, which will then be properly loaded into the scanner, Curry said. He added election judges from both parties will supervise the process and it should not cause much of a delay in tallying results.

“This is a statutory procedure that has been in place in Illinois for a long time,” Curry said.

In addition, all votes will be counted statewide, said Gasperin. But some affected counties may tally results slower than usual, since each is dealing with the problem differently, she added.

Counties reporting ballot size problems are: Winnebago, Vermilion, Iroquois, Douglas, Knox, Grundy, McLean, Warren, Lee, Bond, Bureau, Christian, Clark, Coles, DeWitt, DuPage, Edgar, Macon, Macoupin, Moultrie, Putnam, Rock Island, Shelby and Tazewell.