DuPage Election Commission 'Failed Voters,' Chairman Says

WHEATON, IL — DuPage County Chairman Dan Cronin's ongoing mission dissolve the DuPage County Election Commission gained momentum Tuesday after vote counts were delayed for hours due to a technical problem. In a Facebook post late Tuesday, Cronin said the election commission had "failed the voters of DuPage once again with their inability to provide timely election results."

County officials released a statement Wednesday on behalf of Technology Committee Chairman Kevin Wiley and Committee Vice-Chairman Janice Anderson:

"On behalf of our fellow board members and the Technology Committee, we would like to express our concern about the performance of the DuPage Election Commission Tuesday evening. After conferring with DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin, we request the Executive Director of the Election Commission appear before the full County Board at our next meeting, March 27, to present information about the effort to tabulate and report election results."

When the county's election night results were finally counted, they showed that DuPage County voters support Cronin's quest to consolidate the election commission with the County Clerk's Office. The issue passed with 56.48% of voters in favor of the consolidation and 43.52% in opposition.

On Wednesday morning, Cronin went on to suggeset that the DuPage County Election Commission model —which was established in 1973— was to blame. He added that the current model is "one I've been trying to get approval to modernize," in a Facebook post.

Cronin thanked the volunteers throughout DuPage County who "continued on through a chaotic evening to fulfill their duty."

DuPage County's voting machines crashed in the midst of a close election night for both the Illinois 6th Congressional District and the GOP gubernatorial race. DuPage County officials said in a news release that "certain technical difficulties occurred in closing the precincts."

Related: DuPage County Election Commission Proposition Passes

The malfunction held up the hotly contested Illinois 6th District Congressional race, with Mazeski and Casten within just hundreds of votes of each other.

As of 4:30 a.m., Casten had secured the DuPage County vote, but his final overall totals in Kane, Lake, Cook, and McHenry Counties had not been calculated with these DuPage results.

To remedy the vote counting problem, DuPage County used its ballot and memory card transport procedure to to have the "security-sealed memory cards" from around the county delivered by "bipartisan teams" to the election commission headquarters in Wheaton.

Final counts were still rolling in on the election commission website as of 4 a.m. Wednesday.

Officials said in a statement, "The integrity of the Memory Cards and the Votes casts were never compromised as a result of this delay in uploading the March 20, 2018 General Primary Election results."

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