The Illinois Democratic Party sought a court order Thursday to allow election officials in Chicago and suburban Cook County to use a banned feature on punch-card voting equipment that can flag mismarked ballots and give voters a chance to correct mistakes.
The feature is installed in voting equipment in the city and county, but its use is prohibited by state law.
Although the Cook County Circuit Court lawsuit seeking the court order technically names as defendants David Orr, Cook County clerk; Langdon Neal, Chicago Board of Election Commissioners chairman; and other election officials, its true target reaches across party lines to state Senate President James “Pate” Philip (R-Wood Dale).
For two years Orr and Neal’s offices have sought a change in the law to allow use of the electronic device, which is designed to reject ballots where voters have either failed to properly mark a choice for an office or with errors, such as “overvotes,” when more than one candidate is selected, or “undervotes,” when no candidate is properly selected. Democrats blame Philip for blocking the legislation, an accusation Philip says is inaccurate, even though his office has qualms about the change.
The lawsuit says the state’s lack of action is unconstitutional and denies city and suburban Cook County voters the right to fair, uniform elections because state law allows the use of ballot defect-detection equipment in the handful of Illinois counties that use more sophisticated optical scan voting systems..
Cook County and Chicago acquired the technical ability to alert voters to errors–and allow them to cast a corrected ballot–as part of a recent $25 million overhaul of equipment.
Philip spokeswoman Patty Schuh said “legitimate concerns” had been raised about the technology that have not been adequately aired. She denied that Philip’s opposition is an attempt to suppress the largely Democratic Cook County and Chicago vote.
“There’s been concern about that feature–there’s no doubt about it,” Schuh said. “There are 17 Senate districts in Cook County that overlap Cook and a neighboring county that doesn’t have that feature. So you would have unequal standards in one Senate district.”
Orr scoffed at that argument, noting the exception in the law for counties that use optical scanning systems in which voters designate choices by filling in a paper ballot similar to a standardized test.
“They already passed legislation allowing some counties to do it,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get this passed for two years. Nobody in their wildest dreams could believe that Springfield would block any way to make vote counts more accurate. That’s a pretty desperate excuse.”
In the 2000 presidential election, more than 120,000 ballots in Cook County were not counted because they were spoiled for one reason or another–an error rate of 6 percent. In counties with error-detection systems, fewer than 1 percent of ballots lacked presidential votes.
In a similar lawsuit filed in federal court this month, the American Civil Liberties Union claimed the voting system in Illinois discriminates against minorities.
Also Thursday, Secretary of State Jesse White and state election officials urged voters who had registration problems last fall to verify they are registered before the Feb. 27 municipal elections.
