Primary election done but not yet complete as more work needs to be done

Although the primary election has come and gone, the actual official tallying of the races won't be made for awhile. There is a process that the county and state will go through to make sure those who won their races actually did win.

Livingston County Clerk Kristy Masching told the Daily Leader Thursday that there is a process to be followed for the votes to move from the county to the Illinois State Board of Elections and then become official.

Among the first things is making sure what absentee ballots come in, there is a two-week period after the election for that to happen. Masching said there were 28 absentee ballots taken and 13 had been returned before the election. Of the 15 still out there, they must be postmarked on or before midnight of June 28.

“If we get them during the two-week period through the 12th, those will be processed and counted,” Masching said.

A day before, on July 11, a “retab” will take place, which Masching said is a random sampling. Five machines will be taken at random for this process.

“We have no clue what they're going to pick or who they're going to pick,” Masching said.

She pointed out that the election vendor comes in and the ballots and machines used in those precincts are run through again. The tapes are then compared to those from election day for validation that the machines were running correctly and that there was nothing improper.

The early voting machine, which is in the county clerk's office, is also checked. Masching said there were more than 600 ballots run through the early voting machine.

The ISBE will canvass the information provided by the county.

“After we go ahead and proclaim the results, which is after the canvass, then there's a five-day period where anyone who came within 5 percent of the votes for any successful candidate can go ahead and go back through and look through the stuff to see if there were any improprieties that would warrant them to go to the courts and look at it,” Masching said.

Come Friday, July 29, the primary election will become official.

“The machines ran pretty good and we had a lot of new judges,” Masching said. “We didn't have very many problems at all.”

Most of the issues that did arise involved those wanting to vote but who hadn't registered or had moved or who didn't live in the precinct they thought they did.

There was one case of a candidate who moved and thus had to withdraw. There was a lone Democrat — Dan Hobart — running for County Board in District 1 but had moved out of the district and was no longer eligible.

“Overall, it went well,” Masching said. “Once the polls close at 7, the judges were all scrambling around trying to get their reports done because they were ready to go home.

“I think the first ones came in about 20 till 8. We usually we can get done by 9 o'clock with stuff, but they all came in about one time and we didn't get finished with things until 10, 10:15 or so, which was a little later than usual.

“We had to report to the state board of elections when we were done,” Masching added. “It's called the '2 o'clock Report' because they want to know if we're done before 2 a.m. If we weren't, we would need to let them know what happened and why. We're always glad to get them that information right away. We thought it went very smooth overall.”

There will be a party convention on July 27 for the Democrats and Republicans. This is when the parties will receive the certificate of election from the county and elect officers.

However unlikely it is, Ryan Bohm, the winner of the Republican primary for sheriff, could still face competition, as can GOP candidates running for the county board. The Democrats could get a candidate on the ballot through the vacancy nomination process, which includes the completion of specific paperwork.

Independents have had since April to circulate petitions and these need to be filed between July 5 and 11.

“A lot of people don't do that because they have to have so many more signatures,” Masching said. “We haven't had any inquiries.”

However, if people ran for office in the primary, they are not eligible to try again in another party, as an independent or as a write-in.

Before the November General Election, Masching's office will be looking for election judges. She said that three or four judges for each location is desired in order to be able to cover each other should something happen, such as sudden illness. There were many precincts that did not have that many for the primary.

“It's harder and harder to find judges,” Masching said.

The November General Election will take place on the latest date possible according to the U.S. Constitution, which is Nov. 8 — the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

This article originally appeared on Pontiac Daily Leader: Primary election done but not yet complete as more needs to be done