Ela Township voters to get pink ballot as well as usual one

A filing mix-up means Ela Township voters are in for an election bonus -- two ballots to fill out Feb. 5.

A referendum question about garbage collection in unincorporated areas was left off the optical scan ballot. Instead, township voters will receive a special pink ballot containing the question.

Ela Township Supervisor Lucy Prouty said the town board approved the question in November and filed it with the Lake County clerk's office before the Dec. 6 deadline to certify referendums.

The omission was discovered last week when Township Clerk Bill Donnan, who filed the paperwork, didn't see the question on the Lake County clerk's election Web site.

"They lost it," Prouty said. "We spent all last week trying to get this on the ballot."

Lake County Clerk Willard Helander said the question was overlooked because the paperwork was filed along with Ela Township's tax levy extension documents instead of separately, as required.

"It was filed with our tax extension office, which has nothing to do with the election," she said. "It never went into our election management system."

When a referendum question is filed with her office, Helander said, the government agency receives a receipt and a copy of the legal notice and a ballot proof.

"We certainly will accept equal responsibility," she said. "(He) did leave it in our office; it just wasn't in the right place."

Ela's referendum question will be included on the county clerk's election voter guide sent to every household and is now posted on the clerk's Web site.

It will not appear on the optical scan ballots run through a ballot counter on Election Day. Those were proofed, tested and printed in late December.

"To go back and redo that, it's just not feasible in the time permitted," Helander said. "We start early voting next week. Military ballots had to go out no later than today (Monday)."

On Election Day, the 3,737 eligible township voters will receive the pink ballots to choose whether to allow the town board to negotiate a contract on residents' behalf for garbage collection services in unincorporated areas.

If the question is approved, it would not raise taxes for any township residents. Unincorporated residents would be billed individually by the chosen agency for services such as collection, disposal, composting or recycling of garbage, refuse and ashes within unincorporated areas.

Those ballots will be placed in a cardboard ballot box and hand-counted. The results will not be known until the write-in candidate results are tallied and posted after Feb. 5.

Helander said it didn't cost her office much to prepare the pink ballots.

"The only real cost was paper and that's extremely nominal, probably wasn't even $20," she said.