From commenter “In favor of all paper ballots:”

Why did the McHenry County manual ballots contain an oval for most offices were there was no candidate?

The only exception I could find was County Board D-4.

Kane County had no such thing.

Based on voting records in primaries, McHenry County voters are Republican in the majority: 39,457 tended to vote Democrat in primaries and 56,348 tended to vote Republican in primaries.

There is a real anomaly when the governor’s race showed a majority for the Republican candidate and yet both Hultgren and Roskam were defeated.

Rauner had 60,579 votes compared to Pritzger with 48,420.

This would appear to reflect the tendency for this County to vote Republican.

However in the Congressional vote it was 56,646 Republican and 59,636 Democrat.

We do know which candidates got the biggest ‘bump’ about thirty six hours after the initial numbers were posted and there appeared to be more than 20,000 ‘missing’ ballots.

Miraculously those ‘missing’ ballots were supposedly found and now included in the results.

I have heard that ‘early’ votes had been missed and maybe there was a software issue.

I have put on my tinfoil hat and come up with the following:

From the McHenry County Election Judge manual Page 32 item 14:

“Paper Ballot voter: Initial application and direct voter to Ballot Distribution Table.”

This is the way I voted and had no problem.

By having an election judge initial the paper ballot used, we are supposed to be assured that no ‘ballot stuffing’ occurs.

However, the Touchscreen voting with paper tape backup has been replaced with what many call ‘machine’ voting by using the ES&S Express vote system.

This process is described on Page 33 of the Election Judge manual.

Based on my interpretation of ES&S documentation I can find no indication anywhere that precludes the gathering of ballots after the election and replacing those ballots with other ballots.

The Express vote ballots appear to be very different than the regular paper ballot because the ballot contains only the choices made by the voter.

From the ES&S system documentation for the Express Vote machines used in McHenry County for this election:

“The machine provides a summary report for the voter to review his or her choices before the ballot is printed. Only the voter’s choices are printed on the ballot.

“The phrase ‘No Selection’ appears under any contest in which the elector did not vote.

“Overvotes and crossover votes cannot occur on this equipment and a voter is warned about undervotes prior to the completion of voting.

“Once the ballot has been marked and is provided to the voter, the ExpressVote clears its internal memory and the paper ballot is the only lasting record of the voting selections made.

“The voter may visually confirm his or her selections, or the ballot may be re-inserted into the machine and the voter selections summary report will provide an audio summary for voters with visual impairments.

“The voter proceeds to enter the ballot into the DS200 or a secured ballot box to be hand tabulated by election inspectors after the polls have closed.

“Ballots marked using the ExpressVote also may be tabulated using the DS850.”

If we had a competent County Clerk and a Chairman who was not a proven liar, I may not be having these thoughts.

Were the ‘missing’ ballots changed?