Ballots still not available for early voting; ES&S responds to criticism by Asbridge

While early voting and absentee voting began in some parts of Illinois for the Feb. 5 primary, Hancock County still does not have ballots to allow voters to take advantage of those options.

“I do not have any ballots yet, and I don't expect them this week,” said County Clerk Kerry Asbridge. “We're not the only county in this boat.”

In a statement issued last week, Asbridge called for an investigation into election vendors by the Department of Justice because of high costs and complications with ballots.

“I have had no response from the Department of Justice,” Asbridge said, “I did receive a call from a national watchdog group in Seattle, saying they were quite pleased to see our challenge. There seems to be a problem with vendors in many parts of the country.”

Amanda Brown from Election Systems and Software, Inc., responded to Asbridge's criticism of the vendor.

“ES&S has a long history of working with election officials, including those in Hancock County, to prepare for and conduct smooth running elections. We certainly look forward to doing so in 2008,” Brown wrote.

“To specifically address the points raised by the Hancock County Clerk, the increased cost of administering elections is a reflection of the rising cost of new technology. For example, during the past several years, Hancock County has transitioned from using punch card ballots to an optical scan voting system to comply with updated requirements included in federal law.

“Further, with regard to any changes in the processes and requirements for submitting election data, ES&S customers in Illinois were notified of changes in the process for ordering ballots in December. Since that time, we have worked directly with customers throughout the state to implement these changes and to offer options for doing so,” Brown said.

As well as vendors, Asbridge said he is critical of state and federal legislators.

“The Help America Vote legislation literally put the small vendors out of business. We are down to only two election vendors nationwide, where there used to be three in Illinois. Now they are working to get all this done before the big primary day with over 20 primaries on Feb. 5,” Asbridge said.

When the ballots are received in the county, absentee votes can be cast until the day before the election. The last day to send a request for an absentee ballot by mail is Jan. 25. The county clerk's office will mail out absentee ballots up through the Thursday before the election, or Jan. 31.

Asbridge said new election laws require different software for each precinct, to allow for precinct committeeman candidates, even though there may not be anyone running in many of the precincts. Previous software allowed for that one change.

“It becomes redundant to set up each precinct as a separate ballot style when no one is running and all the rest of the ballot for that area is identical,” Asbridge said.

Another reason for so many ballots on this election is that there are no elections in November of odd years now that school elections have been moved to April.

“More gets piled on to the election when there is only one a year,” he said.

This year's election includes two city referenda for Hamilton, a Carthage park district question, and deactivation questions for Warsaw and the Nauvoo/Colusa school districts.

In addition to the presidential primary and selection of convention delegates and precinct committeemen, there are primaries for county offices of circuit clerk, state's attorney and coroner, county board members, state representatives and senator, and U.S. representative.

“I really think federal legislators were asleep at the switch when they passed this thing (Help America Vote act). Ballot layout and retaining election judges is much more critical than spending money on new ‘toys',” Asbridge said.

He noted that ES&S had called with an offer for a $14,000 per year service contract on the handicapped voting machines, which have yet to be needed in Hancock County. Blackberry electronic devices were offered to be programmed with all voters and their voting locations “in case someone comes to the wrong polling place,” Asbridge said.