Some frustrated voters in metro-east gave up as precincts ran out of ballots

From ballot shortages to crashed websites, Tuesday’s primary proved to be a challenge for county clerks in the metro-east.

In Madison and St. Clair counties, clerks had to print and rush ballots to precincts that ran short or ran out of ballots.

And in a dozen or so counties — mostly in Southern Illinois — there were no results available online until late Tuesday night. Those counties, including Clinton, St. Clair, Monroe and Randolph, all use the same vendor: Platinum Election Results.

Madison County Clerk Debbie Ming-Mendoza said about 70,000 people voted in Madison County on Tuesday. In previous primaries, turnout has been around 25,000.

Ming-Mendoza said there were eight precincts out of 225 in Madison County where election workers ran out of ballots. She said there were problems for voters in both parties, and in varying geographic areas. She said her office printed out additional ballots as quickly as possible and rushed them to precincts, in some cases having sheriff’s deputies make the deliveries.

“I wish I could have had a crystal ball to predict that 70,000 people would vote,” Ming-Mendoza said. “I know people are upset. I recognize their concern. I’m just as concerned and upset.”

She said she ordered poll workers to stay longer and wait for ballots, so that everyone could vote. But she acknowledged that in a few precincts, there may have been a few people who left in frustration before fresh ballots arrived.

Amber Kerkemeyer of Fosterburg said she arrived to vote at the Foster 5 precinct about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, but they were out of Republican ballots. She said voters were told there were more ballots on the way.

“One lady in front of me said she’d been there 55 minutes already,” Kerkemeyer said.

Kerkemeyer said she waited with her 4-month-old baby and finally was able to vote at about 8:15 p.m. She said she saw a couple of voters give up and leave.

“I know of two that left,” Kerkemeyer said. “And I heard that four before me had left.”

She added, “With all the publicity the election was getting, they should have known it was going to be bigger than normal. They should have prepared a little better, I think. Everybody was kind of getting upset, and rightfully so. Some people were waiting three hours.”

Karen Boyd said she gave up after waiting for ballots at the Foster 5 precinct for about two hours. She had arrived there about 5 p.m.

Boyd, a nurse, said she had been up since about 5 a.m. for work, and needed to get home to her family.

“When you go to vote, you think maybe if the lines are long, it might be an hour. But to have no ballots, that’s inexcusable,” Boyd said.

Ming-Mendoza said she doesn’t doubt that some voters gave up and left, rather than wait for ballots.

“I’m sure that happened. They were frustrated and wanted to go home and have their dinner. I don’t blame them. I don’t blame the voters at all for being upset,” she said.

Madison County Republican Party Chairman Chris Slusser said he was told of shortages of Republican ballots at dozens of precincts in Madison County. Slusser said he wants a bipartisan review of what went wrong.

“Every day in the news, we’ve been hearing about the record turnout in the Republican primary in every single state, yet somehow, our county clerk was unprepared for the coming storm, despite plenty of advance notice,” Slusser said. “And the sad result was that hundreds of voters were disenfranchised on Election Day. This was an unprecedented breakdown.”

Ming-Mendoza said she’ll review what happened and make improvements. “We’ll do better in November,” she said.

Ming-Mendoza said she didn’t know if the problems might spark any challenges from candidates.

St. Clair County Clerk Tom Holbrook said phone lines at his office were tied up because of new grace period voting rules that allow people to register to vote on Election Day at polling places.

Election judges had to call his office to ensure people were registered at the right precinct. There are only 16 phone lines in the clerk’s office, but 192 precincts.

Sometimes elections judges waited on the line for five to 10 minutes, but more people came to the polling place in the meantime.

Holbrook’s office prepared for 30 percent turnout, which is high for a primary election. In 2004 and 2008, St. Clair County had about 30 percent turnout. In 2000 there was 17.7 percent turnout, in 2012 there was 19 percent.

Instead, St. Clair County had more than 38 percent turnout, and had to print extra ballots for some precincts. Deputies and clerk’s employees were hauling ballots to precincts during the day.

“It’s good people are voting,” Holbrook added. “The more people who participate in our democracy the better off we are.”

Holbrook reiterated there were touch screens available for people to vote if paper ballots had run out.

“No one was denied the right to vote at any time, they may have had to wait 10 or 15 minutes to get to a touch screen,” Holbrook said.

Because of budget constraints, St. Clair County voters also did not receive traditional “I Voted” stickers. The county this year asked its department heads to cut budgets by 10 percent.

“It broke my heart,” Holbrook said. “It’s not in the budget… there’s priorities.”

No online results

For the first few hours after the polls closed, there were no online election results in counties where the clerks have contracts with Platinum Election Services.

Those counties included: Adams, Clinton, Fayette, Franklin, Hardin, Marion, Monroe, Pulaski, Randolph, Union and Wayne.

Representatives from Platinum could not immediately be reached for comment.

Platinum provides an array of election-related services, including tabulation of votes, for the counties. Posting results on a web page on election night is just one of the services.

Holbrook said a PDF of results of more than 99 percent of results was posted online about 10 p.m. and made available by Platinum Election Results.

In the past results may not have been finalized until 2 or 3 a.m., Holbrook said.

“Where we failed was the graphic site,” Holbrook said.

Platinum also provides ballot printing for the county, manages voter files and networking to the state board of elections.

Holbrook said Platinum was overloaded after the polls closed. Holbrook said many organizations from outside the area were trying to access results.

St. Clair County has been with Platinum for several years, before Holbrook became county clerk. A new contract was signed in March 2013 for the election from 2014 through 2017. In that contract, the company reduced its costs to the county by 4 percent.

For the 2016 primary, Platinum provided election services to St. Clair County for $143,376. It includes printing of ballots, absentee ballot applications, and sample ballots, early voting support, Election Day support, and posting of election night results on the web, among other things.

St. Clair County in 2016 is paying Platinum $55,000 for voter registration software, under a contract signed in 2011 by former clerk Bob Delaney.

Platinum also charged St. Clair County $2,080 for combining the East St. Louis and St. Clair County election results onto one website. The combined website was set to debut as the primary results were reported. The site also could report individual precinct results.

Also results normally would have been updated three to four times on election night, rather than the large update at 10 p.m.

“We were really hopeful to roll out a really nice website if it could have connected,” Holbrook said. “It had a lot more graphics, a lot more instantaneous reporting.”

“It’s working. People just couldn’t get to it,” Holbrook added. “That’s what was so frustrating on their part and mine. We thought we had something very nice to roll out this primary, and it fell flat on its face. The product didn’t fail, the connection to it did. They’re going to have to take care of that connection issue. And they will.”

Holbrook said overall service from Platinum has been “stellar,” and Tuesday night’s issue happened when others were looking.

“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time for them,” Holbrook said. “They’re going to make it work, or they’re going to have a problem with our county.”

Randolph County Clerk Pat Laramore said she was told that Platinum had a problem with a computer server.

“They did finally get the server going,” Laramore said.

Laramore said her office didn’t get many complaints from the public about results not being available online, because there wasn’t much interest in the election in Randolph County. She said a lot of the people who have an interest in the results still come to the courthouse on election night to get them.

Laramore said she’s very happy with Platinum.

“I feel they really know elections,” Laramore said. “Just because there was a glitch last night; I don’t have a problem with that.”

Laramore said any problems in the past with online results in Randolph County were only brief. “There might have been an issue, but in no time we had them up and running again,” she said.

Laramore said she didn’t have information immediately available on how much the county pays Platinum.

Monroe County Clerk Dennis Knobloch said his office got just a few calls from people wanting to know results. He said his staff simply read the results to the callers.

“So that was not a problem,” he said.

Knobloch said he’ll be talking with Platinum representatives about what happened, but he doesn’t know if the county will be able to seek any type of refund.

“Definitely we’ll be talking with them about it,” Knobloch said. “But at the same time, it’s not a major issue as far as I’m concerned.”

Knobloch said he didn’t have information immediately available on how much Monroe County pays Platinum.

Clinton County Clerk Mary Rakers said Platinum representatives told her the website crashed because of volume.

Rakers said only a few people called her office Tuesday night, and they were given results over the phone or via email.

Rakers said Platinum’s charge to Clinton County for the primary was about $41,000, of which about $1,800 is for posting the results online. She said she expects Platinum will provide some type of refund.

Rakers said she’s happy with Platinum’s overall election services.

“It’s an extremely good system, it’s just that what happened last night was a huge failure,” Rakers said.

She said the election otherwise went smoothly in Clinton County. “The only thing we had problems with was letting the public know what the results were,” she said.

This story was originally published March 16, 2016 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Some frustrated voters in metro-east gave up as precincts ran out of ballots."