Is election commission worth saving?

The Aurora Election Commission is vital to the people of Aurora because it is run by a bi-partisan board of commissioners, it offers state of the art election equipment, and it administers elections in a cost effective and efficient manner.
Contrary to the Beacon News claim, the Aurora Election Commission was formed because the city fathers did not believe that the administration of elections could be fairly administered at the county level. Keeping the administration of elections within the city ensured a bi-partisan review of all election procedures. That bi-partisanship endures today as both Democrats and Republicans are jointly represented as appointed by the court, with the Commissioners overseeing the Aurora Election Commission and its small staff of four full time employees.
As a bi-partisan Board of Commissioners the Aurora Election Commission is legally entitled to receive separate and distinct federal election revenue dollars to assist in the purchase of election equipment as recently enacted by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). This independence allowed the City of Aurora to make its own decision on voting equipment to be used in the city of Aurora, and when Kane County chose to purchase a voting system that had no federally certified paper ballot component, the Aurora Board of Election Commissioners was able to purchase a voting system that is federally certified both for the use of its paper ballot voting systems, and the electronic voting device. The electronic voting system was used at two early voting sites in the city as required by the new legislation just passed in Illinois last summer. And while Kane County does offer many early voting sites, it should, it is a much larger jurisdiction, covering sixteen townships and over 540 square miles, the city of Aurora, which falls in just Aurora township has offered early voting using its electronic voting systems in complete and total compliance of federal and state laws, period, no question about it.
In addition to being wise with their selection of a state of the art voting system, the Aurora Election Commission has been very deliberate with the costs to support the Commission. The small staff is always well within the city budget and the costs to support and administer the voting system have been consistent since the first use of the equipment in 2006 as federally required.
There is no unnecessary layer of government, the costs to run the Aurora Election Commission would be equal or greater in staff alone if the county were to absorb the entity. In fact the City of Aurora may in fact be in jeopardy of misusing federal Help America Vote revenues should they abandon the newly purchased system and then attempt to reapply for federal dollars in order to be compatible with the Kane County voting system and avoid the certain claim that voters in Kane County enjoy different levels of voting rights due to the fact that they would be voting on completely different and incompatible systems. The costs to the city to purchase the same system being used in Kane County would easily be in excess of $500,000.00 just to purchase the equipment.
With its bi-partisan board of Commissioners, its state of the art voting systems and its common sense consistent cost effective approach to supporting its small agency, the Aurora Election Commission is vital to the citizens of Aurora.
The Beacon News should reconsider all the compelling factors and work toward educating its readers on the benefits a city Election Commission brings to its citizens and continue to build upon the strong tradition started in 1934 of providing open, honest and accurate elections to the City of Aurora.

Great commentary Robert. Thank you for your insight. I think before the Beacon can start throwing stones they do need to look at all the facts. How many complaints came in to Kane County? There have been several newspaper articles about Cunningham and issues with his department, such as running over budget and machines not working as well. To me, this seemed to be a very difficult election with two different ballots.

My shot at a compelling reason without making it an ad for the commission.

It makes local elections (alderman, mayor) easier to pull off because of Aurora spanning 4 counties (yes, I know the election commission only covers 3). Instead of having to deal with 4 entities to do a city election we have to deal with only one or at most two. For one ward you could end up having three (or 4 depending on how the 9th ward gets re-drawn in 4 years) election authorities processing one ward.

With the run off process for alderman (and mayor) imagine how happy the Kendall county clerk would be having to run an election just for Aurora for one precinct because of a ward needing to have a run off election.

Would people be comfortable with having different machine types and methods in city elections depending on the county?

Also if you look at the list of election authorities in Illinois
http://www.elections.il.gov/ElectionAuthorities/ElecAuthorityList.aspx
You will see that most cities our size and smaller have their own election authorities including Chicago, Rockford, Danville, East St. Louis, Peoria, Bloomington and Galesburg. So if nothing else Aurora is not unique.

Just some thoughts.

OneMan

Abolishing the Commission is fine if - and only if - the Kane County clerk agrees to open a small branch office here in Aurora.

By the way, just who appoints the commissioners to the Aurora Election Commission now and who are they? What do they think of how the election ran?

Oh, and has the Beacon asked for the paper records of the commission's budget requests to see if they were all approved? Or do you just plan to take the mayor at his word, I mean, press release.

CETERA RESPONDS:

Clark,

One of our reporters is trying to get those questions answered.

I find it interesting just the week before this all happened Alderman Rick Lawrence was asking the mayor about the review and status of how cost-effective the election commission is. I know Lawrence raised this in 2005, but nothing was ever done by the Weisner administration as far as I can tell.

Now, all of a sudden, when there's a big problem, Weisner blames his own his city department, but he does it through a press release??? If I were a city employee, I'd be thinking that if anything goes wrong, Weisner is just going to blame us and pretend he has nothing to do with it.

Can the Beacon show their full statement so we can see what they were trying to do?

CETERA RESPONDS:

Dan,

Whose full statement are you looking for?

OneMan, to me, the only way I can see an election commission justified is to have it cover all four counties. Otherwise, why should DuPage residents pay for something they don't get to use at all?

The county election commissions also do other municipal elections at the same time that Aurora would have it, so I don't see any big problem and we are paying for it already with our county taxes.

County vs. city election commission are probably going to have the same issues with fairness, equipment and so on, so the real difference comes down to cost. We would save money without the city commission.

I also think voter turnout would improve. Kane could hire Carole Holtz to run their satellite office in Aurora, but she wouldn't have to deal with a mayor who shoots off press releases instead of picking up the phone.

I generally concur with you OneMan and Clark

Investigate, identify the issues, root causes and quality control
issues. Then develop a corrective measures, up to and including serious
overhaul of personnel where necessary.

Unless and until you know the who, what, where, when, why and how,
implementing a fix won't generally have the intended resolutions.

As noted but others (and the Beacon on several occassions), The Kane
County Clerk's office has not been exempt of these issues and oftimes
has sung the same tune to exculpate taking appropriate responsibility.

(It's those darn Election Judges, mis-informed voters, budget constraints,
"we're doing the best we can"...yadda-yadda).

Before gutting and nailing the doors shut on the Aurora Election Commission,
let's find out what's happening then propose a series of alternative solutions.
Then let the citizens make an informed choice.

Electronic voting like Kane County has is unfortunately hackable. California just decertified all electronic voting machines. Now as also widely reported is the fact that Cunningham hired a convicted felon to run his elections division a couple years ago. This combined with insecure machines, and his track record, means that Aurora needs to keep their own election commission. I believe Kane should adopt an election commission like Aurora, not the other way around. elected partisan politicans should NOT be running elections. They are too important.

Cunningham shows that he not only had bad judgement in buying machines that other states are NOW DECERTIFYING, but that he put a fox in charge of the henhouse - the person who runs elections was convicted of theft from an elderly lady. Having a bipartisan commission keeps our elections far more fair than Kane County. Aurora can fix its problems.

I live in the northeast section of the city and vote at Marmion.

I didn't realize until after I read the article in the Beacon that in fact my ward/district was affected as well. The referendum for the Forest Preserve district wasn't on the ballot. I was provided with two ballots for both the interim and primary election for Denny Hastert's seat.

The bottom line on this is that there appears to have been errors at the election commission that need to be investigated and addressed so it doesn't happen again. The debate on whether or not to abolish the commision is besides the point, first let's get the problems fixed.

Unless you are going to prevent anyone with a felony conviction from ever having employment, I think that criticism of whoever was hired is just a cheap shot and inappropriate. Bill Clinton was impeached and got to continue having the button to our nuclear weapons.

Kane County's elections went well this time. Mistakes and glitches can happen with all types of equipment, but everyone will be voting electronically sooner or later.

Financially, it doesn't make sense to have the Aurora Election Commission. Have a branch office for Kane County and you get the same benefits, less cost and problem is resolved.

Alderman Rick Lawrence was right back in 2005.

Dan,

I seem to recall something in the Beacon a while back where one of the counties was complaining about having to do an election for one school district on a referendum for a small area.

The concern I would have is by getting rid of the commission the city would be compelled to re-district in 2012 with wards not spanning county lines in order to avoid election issues.

Since we do city elections as a two phase process (depending on how many candidates are running) you have some wards that have two rounds of voting and some that have only one. You may end up with Kendall and Will in particular having to run an election in just the Aurora portion of their counties. We have had elections where there was only one or two races on the ballot and they were both city races (I seem to recall one time in my part of town the only race on the ballot was the Alderman at large race). Do you think the counties are going to be real happy putting on these small elections in a small part of the county.

Also I don't think this is going to reduce costs all that much, you might eliminate a couple of professionals but you are going to need the same number of machines, ballots and election judges.

Also doesn't part of the funding of the election commission come from the respective counties involved?

Perhaps it's a matter of perspective (I live where Kane, Kendall, DuPage and Will meet in the city) but the Kane county clerk is not the magic bullet here. You have school districts, park districts that span multiple counties, something most other cities do not have to deal with.

OneMan

I ALSO VOTE AT MARMION. LAST SEPEMBER I RECEIVED NY UPDATED VOTERS CARD IN THE MAIL. IT LISTED MY POLLING PLACE AS WELL AS WHAT OFFICES I AM ENTITLED TO VOTE ON. I KNEW THAT IN 2007 I VOTED ON THE BATAVIA PARK DISTRICT, SO I KNEW THAT THIS ELECTION I WAS NOT IN THE FOX VALLEY PARK DISTRICT. I ALSO KNEW FROM MY VOTER'S CARD THAT I WAS NOT IN THE 16-1 JUDICIAL DISTRICT. WHEN I WENT TO THE POLLING PLACE, I SAW THE DIFFERENT BALLOT SAMPLES POSTED WITH THE PAPER THE COLOR OF THE PARTY. SO I KNEW THAT WHEN I WENT TO THE JUDGE, WHAT PARTY COLOR I SHOULD HAVE, WHAT RACES SHOULD BE ON MY BALLOT, AND I CAN READ SO I KNEW TO TURN THE BALLOT OVER. STOP BLAMING THE ELECTION OFFICE FOR YOU FAILING TO DO YOUR JOB AS A VOTER AND BEING INFORMED.

Thank you to the Aurora Election Commission. I called Kane County because when I registered at the Driver's facility, I was told by the lady I was in Kane County. Once Kane heard that I had an Aurora Address, they told me to call Aurora and hung up on me. I did call the Aurora Election Commission, and they took the time to look up my address and find out that I live the Dupage part of Aurora. The lady on the phone also told me the number to the Dupage office,but I could get the information by looking on DuPage's website. I am new to the area and I didn't know how divided the area is, but I was able to vote thanks to Aurora Election Commission helping me when Kane did not, and DuPage's phone would only go to the answering machine. Aurora should never get rid of an office that give customer service even when the person may not be "theirs".

Let me see if I can get all this straight....

Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner gets criticized in the Beacon News for campaign contributions...and two days later instead of answering the charges he repeats "reports" of election problems from "numerous" voters, and goes so far as to issue a press release to help focus attention on the only court appointed bi-partisan city department which has been guaranteeing both Democratic and Republican election administration in Aurora since 1934….

State Senator Linda Holmes contacted the Beacon News "to report that the $45 million Fox Valley Park District Bond Referendum and the names of candidates in the Aurora Judicial Subcircuit did not appear on ballots in the city's 3rd Ward", and that "Aurora Alderman Stephanie Kifowit told her she was the 21st person to pull a faulty Democratic ballot in that precinct"...when it was later learned that not all of Ward 3 is totally within the boundaries of either the Park District or the Judicial Subcircuit the Beacon News now reports that State Senator Linda Holmes retracted her earlier statement and is changing her claim that Alderman Stephanie Kifowit did not tell her what she earlier "reported"....

Kane County Clerk John Cunningham announces on Election Day that numerous precincts and polling places in Kane County are under court order to remain open later than the 7PM closing time due to "problems" with access to "polling places" and "equipment issues".

This is the third time in three elections that a Kane County Court has ordered extended voting hours for polling places and precincts in a Kane County election due to administrative problems or election equipment problems with the Kane County voting system. The Beacon News is silent on Kane County's court ordered voting extension and instead reports on “numerous reported problems across the city's (Aurora) polling places". There have been no extended voting hours ordered in Aurora and the election judges in every one of the 80 precincts returned their voting equipment and then reported over 35,500 ballots unofficially as is their duty for the combination of the February 5, 2008 Primary Election and the February 5, 2008 Special 14th Congressional Primary Election, an unprecedented election event. The Aurora Election Commission completed this complex and historical election just three and one half hours after the polls closed.

County Clerks from Kane, Kendall, Whiteside, Henry, DeKalb, Lee and the DuPage County Election Commission all report various degrees of voter confusion regarding the Special 14th Congressional Primary Election....due to the fact that many voters simply did not understand that both elections were being held on the same day...

And finally, the Beacon News has established a poll with a “Cast Your Vote” interactive box on their home webpage asking the question, “Should the Aurora Election Commission be abolished?” The “yes” or “no” question offers a chance for citizens to vote on the question and review the results….currently the results are running 94% against abolishing the Aurora Election Commission….as I mentioned I am not at all sure I can get this all straight…..is 94% a compelling percentile?

Some DEFINITE changes HAVE to be made to be made to the Aurora Election Commission. There needs to be more accountability!!!
The Election Commission should also work harder to get more knowledgeable election judges.

The last 4 times that I have gone to vote, the judges at my polling place were not ready at 6AM. This year it was worse, they were not ready until after 6:30AM!!!

For all of you complaining about the election judges, I know all of the counties and the Aurora Commission are looking for judges. I look forward to you all stepping up to help.

For many years Illinois has been famous, or infamous if you will, for having more units of local government than any state in the USA other than Pennsylvania. To my knowledge this relationship is unchanged to date.
Also to my knowledge, citizens of Illinois are not completely satisfied by the performance of our multitude of governments. It would seem that we should be open to change for improvement, provided that they are thoroughly considered and judiciously approved.
Even before the last unfulfilled consideration of combining the City and County Election Commissions, I have felt that this would be a change in the right direction. The current debate has strengthened my feeling. Therefore I am amazed by all of the expressed reasons of support for the status quo, and the lack of support for the change.
In my opinion it is inconsistent to express concern about the quality of Illinois governance and to oppose this relatively simple change in the right direction.

A few things, here. #1, the Mayor needs to practice "Diplomatic Retraint" and quit popping off before he has all the facts (remember the electrical problem downtwn last summer?) The mayor is not a dictator (this is the United States, Democratic-Republic, last I checked) and if he wants to abolish the Election Comission, he needs to do so the way it came in-BY REFERENDUM!! (This is not the Hometown subdivision/Drive-in theatre issue!)
#2, many of these problems should have been addressed by voters BEFORE the ballots were put in the ballot box, not after; Civics 101!!
#3, Does anyone really trust Weisner to conduct a fair, non-partisan election? For him to take shots at Ms Holtz, who is very competent, and by the way, stick around when there is trouble and answers questions as best she can, smacks of utter hypocrisy-where was Weisner in the "water crises" a few years back? He was in charge but as I recall, resigned before it all was resolved! #4, as far as Election Judges, my wife has been one for a few years and for you experts that think they have all the answers, the Election Comission is looking for qualified judges-not too hard: be a registered voter and attend optional training sessions. I'm looking forward to the Mayor and others help recruit more help for these overworked, decent, people!!
Ultimately, either step-up or keep quiet!

Mr Parro, I am sure you have no clue about what is happening in the world of elections. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has recommended that elections be run by non-partisan commissions not by elected officials. No elected official can truly run an election without his party affiliation coming into play. No matter how hard they try; the appearance of party preferential treatment is always there.

Dave, do you know that congress is trying to outlaw touch screen equipment. They want a paper ballot. Florida went to touch screen after the problems with the 2000 election and found they weren't reliable and that equipment has been outlawed by their state legislature. I wouldn't be too fast to jump on the touch screen band wagon.

I for one want NO election run by someone that has any political party behind them. Kane county has repeatedly had problems with equipment and election judges. They are under court order to provide spanish speaking judges. The Aurora Commission has done a good job providing these judges without the need of court intervention. How many times has Kane county signed contracts and spent money without prior approval from the county board.
I'd like to see Jack Cunningham run his election on the same budget Aurora has.

I agree with the EAC. Let's keep politics out of elections. Let's keep the Aurora Election Commission and keep Aurora's elections clean and non-partisan. The Aurora commission deals with four different counties. If you abolish the city election commission who's going to stop the confusion of which county each citizen lives in. Now that's a whole other ball of wax that would probably be better served by keeping things as they are.
Which county do you live in Dave?

There is schooling available for the judges, but if they do not attend, if that the commissions fault. No. I wonder is any of you know how many judges do not show up or call to let anyone know, and therefore places will be short, some judges have gotten sick when working and had to leave. I know of one case where only 1 judge showed up(not this time), and another judge from a different precinet had to keep going back and forth to help out. How would any of you like to do handle this? In one election where I worked, we were asking people as they came in if they wanted to be judges that day, we were that short. If the way it is now, are any of you willing to go to Geneva to get the epuipment and bring it back and then return it the night of voting? How many are willing the hours we do and not be able to eat or take a break when it is so busy you cannot. Yes, sometimes a voters name will not be in the active book, but they can vote and it is sent to the commission. The person puts their ballot in a bag theirself and it is #,locked and will be counted. You will be notified. We take our own cell phones to make calls, buy or bring our own lunches coffee etc., set up where we are working the night before(not paid for this). Are any of you willing to stay after the polls close to do the next phase of work, then take it downtown? Sometimes we are done very late and have not even been able to have dinner. Do you know what time we get up in the morning to perform this job? None of you know about judges that have been on chemo and have come to do this job. We do check for the signs, but cannot do this constantly, and yes, we moved some this time. Shame on the ones running who do this, they know better, yet we are the ones to blame, there has been times when we have caught certain ones wearing stickers for someone and had to take care of this. We will help the disabled, elderly or anyone who needs help and that includes taking them to their cars if necessary. There are times they say they do not need help, but someone will go and watch to make sure they do not. It gives us great pleasure when we can help someone, see the smiles on the children's faces when they get a sticker, and so much more. If you feel the job we do is so bad, then come and be a judge just one time for yourself to see what it is like and then make your comments.

All I know is if we want to see this issues solved we need to get Wesiner out and a quality guy like Lawrence in.

Check out this website a friend emailed me. Seems others have the same idea.

SEERICKRUN.COM

Rick Lawrence is just as bad as Weisner. He is in the pocket of Joe Vansleeze and just likes to hear himself talk. Lame website by the way.

I want to comment on the east Aurora referendum effort. I heard words from Dr. Roberts mouth that should tell everyone why this referendum will go down in flames. He said you need unaniumus support from the school board and the board should carry out consequnces it says will happen if this thing is voted down. Two of the board memebers are curently against the tax hike. Also, the board cut some pragrams last time this referendum failed because they said there was no money, then magically these programs were brought back!!

Hey 'Get real'! As far as I know Lawrence hasn't taken any money from Vantreese. While you may not like what he says Lawrence does care and works very hard for the betterment of Aurora. Unlike Liesner who is only concerned with padding his campaign coffers. Lawrence has lobbied to keep good development like Vantreeses and against bad development like Shoddeen's.

FYI not sure who did the website but it is good as far as content for me and that is what really matters I would encourage everyone to check it out and decide for themselves.

To W. Smith (make believe MD) of course he is owned by Vantresse; just ask Lawrence himself who provided the awnings? Why Lawrence's company of course. And what company would like to keep that contract with vantresse for the next building? Lawrence is owned by Vantresse.