MHHENRY COUNTY, IL – A long-running series of voting snafus led McHenry County board chairman Jack Franks and state representative David McSweeney to ask Joe Tirio, the county clerk and recorder, to request election monitoring for the 2020 primary and general elections.
During elections in 2016, voting hours had to be extended for 48 hours after technological problems arose. In 2018, some 33,000 early votes were not counted; when they were, they ended up changing race results. In April 2019, the wording of a referendum needed to be changed, and there was a nonexistent school board race on the ballot.
These issues led county board member Michael Vijuk to express his worries to the Illinois State Board of Elections via a letter to ISBE executive director Steven Sandvoss on September 30.
“It came from community concerns, it came from board members’ concerns, it came from my own experience,” Vijuk said when asked why he sent the letter. He cited a concern for polling locale availability as another constituent complaint, wherein some voters had to traverse across the Northwest Highway from Fox River Grove to Cary to cast their ballots.
“We had a problem where we had to extend the polling [hours] and we didn’t get informed about that. I had to find out from a third [party],” Vijuk said of the 2016 election.
Tirio, who was elected in 2018, said a hampering towards adding closer polling locations is that McHenry County is one of the few counties in which no schools serve as polling places.
Vijuk’s letter in turn caused Franks and McSweeney to ask Tirio about election monitoring to ensure future elections run without a hitch.
“I enthusiastically supported it, I was in favor of him sending it, and I called and thanked him for it,” Franks said of Vijuk’s letter.
He said Representative McSweeney had requested Tirio ask for ISBE assistance twice before, and that election monitoring would make sure all votes will be accurately counted.
Tirio said that conversations have taken place with the ISBE and that materials such as training documents for election judges will be shared for reviews and critiques starting in early November.
“They’re going to do audits as they typically do…they’re randomly deployed throughout the state on election day,” Tirio said. “Most of what they’re going to be doing is in the days and weeks leading up to the election.”
To make certain that as many mechanical errors as possible are avoided, Tirio said the election machines will go through a process called logic and accuracy testing. This testing involves making sure a severe over-or-undercount of ballots is caught and that the right candidates, races and referendums are the ones being voted on.
Tirio also said the county will be working with voting software vendors to ensure a smooth election day, and that back-up copies of the voting data will be made so accurate counts can still be maintained in case more technological issues do arise.
“Any number of things can happen,” Tirio said, “and for most of those things we have a response.”
Headline: Franks, McSweeney ask Tirio for ISBE election monitoring
Subtitle: The county clerk and recorder said reviews of the McHenry election process are forthcoming
