VotersUnite!

Polling Problems

News 25, By Kelli Watson, Feb 5, 2008

Problems at the polls. Imagine showing up to vote, casting your ballot, and later finding out you got the wrong one.

That was the case for several voters in Peoria today.

News 25's Kelli Watson has more on how the problem is being addressed and what that means as the votes are tallied.

For the people who got the wrong ballots today, they don't get a vote in the local primary races.

Laura Petelle received wrong ballot and said, "I do feel that local races are important to me and I'm upset that I didn't get a say in those."

Petelle is not alone. Several voters incorrectly received "fail safe" ballots. Those ballots only include federal candidates and are supposed to be given to people who moved within the city limits 30 days or more prior to the election.

The problem is many people who never moved received the "fail safe" ballots.

Tom Bride, the Executive Director of the Peoria Election Commission said, "What happened in the situation this morning was that the judge just pushed the wrong button and issued the wrong access code and, even though they're trained, did not look to see that it was a federal only ballot."

Bride says only a handful of people got the wrong ballots. Five trouble shooting teams were sent out to make sure election judges know how to properly enter access codes to give voters the right ballots.

Some power outages also created problems at the polls today at Manual High School and Logan Center. Power went out in each facility for about 15 minutes.

Bride says some emergency paper ballots were used. The electronic systems were re-booted when power was restored.