A lengthy retabulation of the March 18 primary results in Champaign County uncovered major discrepancies in some unofficial vote totals reported on election night. In the uncontested race for 13th Congressional District Democratic Central Committeewoman, for example, Jayne Mazotti of Taylorville now has 5,284 votes — rather than the 450 votes with which she was credited on March 18. In another race — for 15th Congressional District Democratic Central Committeeman — Brandon Phelps had 517 votes, not the 574 votes he was credited with on election night. The badly erroneous election results all were in the Democratic Party primary and all in uncontested races where there was just one candidate for one position. They were the result, said Champaign County Clerk Gordy Hulten, of a flaw in the design of the Democratic ballot. A one-inch white space apparently caused tabulators to misread votes cast in all the races below that spot, affecting vote totals in the uncontested races for 13th and 15th Congressional District committeeman; the 13th and 15th Congressional District committeewoman; and all precinct committeeman races.
Hulten pointed out, however, that the results reported on election night are unofficial. “We have by statute a window where we review and make corrections to unofficial results before we make them official. We do this every election,” Hulten said Friday. “We are well within the statutory time period to make corrections to our election results.
“The attention which this has gotten has been unusual, but there’s nothing unusual about adjusting and making corrections to election results during the period when they are unofficial.”
Full Article: Big election night errors discovered | News-Gazette.com.