Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday played down voters' rejection of a proposed amendment to the Illinois constitution that would have made it harder to expand public employee retirement benefits.

A day after the elections, Quinn says he remains optimistic he can get lawmakers to agree on a plan for bringing down spiraling costs of pensions for government and other public sector workers.

Locally, voters in St. Clair County approved it with 63.88 percent of the vote, but it narrowly failed in Madison County with 59.1 percent of the vote

With about 90 percent of the vote reported on Wednesday morning, the proposed amendment had support from 56 percent of Illinoisans who voted on the measure. But that fell short of the two criteria needed for passage.

The measure needed a favorable vote from either three-fifths of those voting on the measure, or 50 percent of the total number of votes cast in Tuesday's election. Nearly 5 million people voted in the election.

Erika Miner, 34, of Champaign, said she voted against the amendment.

"I do have some friends that are teachers (and) my mom was a teacher," Miner said. "Anything that's going to affect their pensions -- that's a big deal to me."

In Springfield, Lynn McClanahan, 42, a retail grocery manager, said she voted yes because she doesn't believe public workers should be entitled to more benefits than other workers.

"We all work hard and we should all share the burden together," McClanahan said.

According to election results, 9,346 precincts of 10,089 across Illinois had completed tabulating their votes as of late Wednesday morning. In Cook county, 32 precincts had not been counted and results were missing from nearly 500 precincts in DuPage County.