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DuPage to debut new election results system

DuPage County will debut a new system Tuesday that's expected to make viewing election results more interesting, customizable and headache-free.

The DuPage County Election Commission started shopping for different technology after a glitch caused its website to slow down during last April's election and prevented some residents from viewing results.

It ended up hiring Scytl, an international company specializing in electronic voting and election management, to provide a system called "Election Night Reporting."

"What we looked for was a cloud-based system that could upscale depending on anticipated or observed turnout," said Joseph Sobecki, the commission's executive director.

Sobecki said Scytl's system has been used successfully across the nation, including in Lake and Will counties.

The new website to access DuPage's election results is at dupageresults.com.

Visitors will be able to customize their viewing experience to fit the size of their screen and select "favorite" races to track. They also will be able to access a graphical view of in-depth results, including a breakdown of votes received by contest, candidate and precinct.

"The site will be able to provide the election results in a much more aesthetically pleasing fashion with mapping and graphing," Sobecki said.

A variety of resources will be available to the public, including downloadable reports, custom filtering and maps illustrating precincts reporting, voter turnout and results.

"It's a great way to marry data with a graphical representation," Sobecki said.

The commission will start uploading results around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 20, and the first post will have early voting and vote-by-mail tallies. Updates will occur every 15 minutes until all the results are reported.

To protect the election from hacking, the commission won't remotely transmit results from polling places.

Instead, it will continue its long-standing practice of having memory cards from voting machines hand-delivered to its office in Wheaton. The data then is uploaded into the central database.

Critics have blamed the process for delaying the release of results during past elections.

But Sobecki says state and federal security officials support the process DuPage is using.

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