Typical Election Day stories in Chicago are dominated by late-polling place openings within the city limits. This year it's the suburbs that are having problems. Two suburban Cook County precincts opened late, to compensate, they'll close later than the state mandated time of 7:00pm. Free registration required for the link.
In addition to confusion with the new voter equipment (scroll down a couple of posts), there was a shortage of the ballot-specific pens for the new-to-the-general election optical scanning equipment in some Cook County precincts. In layman's terms, the pens are the electoral version of the favorite writing instrument of standardized tests: the number two pencil. But the pen problem has been fixed, according to Cook election officials.
The big surprise as far as election-related problems today is in far-western suburban Kane County--in House Speaker's Dennis Hastert's district.
There's no clear explanation as to why--WBBM Radio is reporting voting machine problems--but many Kane precincts opened late, and a Kane County judge is expected to keep polls there open until 9:30PM.
UPDATE: Kane County polling sites will be open unti 8:30pm.
Technorati tags: Election Day Election Illinois politics news Chicago
No comments:
Post a Comment