Voter turnout caused our County Clerk to be threatened with impeachment.
Last edited Sun Mar 20, 2016, 12:59 PM - Edit history (3)
I don't know if this happened anywhere else in IL, but our R county clerk only had enough ballots printed for a 30% turnout, altho the state regs say to be prepared for 110% of registered voters. He justified the decision saying there was a 23% primary turnout in 2012 and a 35% in 2008. The Dem ballots were gone b/4 noon, and the Rs in middle of the afternoon, as there was roughly a 60% voter turnout overall. We have 2 colleges in our small city, and wonder if that was a factor, tho almost all precincts ran short early. Have to believe Bernie was a factor, plus, as an open primary could have been crossover votes against Trump, as Kasich did well, and Cruz just slightly behind Trump in votes counted so far.
Lots of voters didn't get to vote at all, as they couldn't stay for the 4 to 5 HOURS, that it took for more ballots to be delivered to the precinct sites. A judge ruled that polls had to stay open til 8:30, but still that wasn't enough time for all to vote, plus the folks who had to leave w/o voting due to jobs or health issues. This was the CC's 1st presidential primary since being elected in 2014 and may be his last in office as there are calls for him to step down. The biggest local race was for State's Attorney, and that won't be officially decided until possibly March 28th, as the hurriedly printed ballots had smudges and couldn't be read by the electronic reader, so all those ballots have to be copied to real ballots by county election officials, then put through the reader.
IL has early voting, like 40 days of it, so I had voted for Bernie weeks ago, and reports were that the early voting was double or triple that of previous elections, so why was he not prepared for a larger voter turnout? Other than that he was trying to save money at ultimately the taxpayers expense. I haven't heard of other similar situations in neighboring counties yet.
All Repub. presidential candidates together had roughly 12,000 votes against 3300 for HRC and BS at this point. This is a 60+% senior citizen town, with a small professional class and lots of low wage retail & service workers. Newspaper, TV and radio stations all right-leaning. Local TV station calls the Washington Times their national reporters. Hate radio from dawn to dusk. Closest Bernie campaign office was in Springfield, the state capital, 2 hours away. The people I have talked to about politics this time have all liked what they know about Bernie, even tho they vote Republican, and vigorously dislike Hillary and are afraid of Trump. Did manage to get my neighbor who has never voted in a primary before to go out for Bernie!
Our local paper won't allow online readers unless you have a subscription.
Edited to add this link from today's issue of local Quincy Herald Whig.
http://www.whig.com/article/20160317/ARTICLE/303179787
UPDATE: on 3/18/16; IL Attorney General goes to appellate court to stop voting in Adams County
After a local judge ordered the County Clerk to allow people who were turned away at the polls last Tuesday, due to lack of ballots, to vote all of next week, Lisa Madigan, the AG, went to the ap. court in Springfield to stop the voting. The Adams County Clerk estimates that as many as 100 people at all 34 voting locations may have been prevented from voting. My daughter, who lives in one of the most prosperous & R supporting parts of town voted in the late afternoon, for Bernie, and had no problems, but in the poorest i.e. Dem. precincts, D ballots ran out mid-morning. Her boyfriend did not get to vote although he went back twice.
Madigan's argument sounds a little like Scalia's in Bush v Gore, in that the available vote totals have been published so allowing more voting would somehow compromise the results.
See article below for more details.
http://www.whig.com/article/20160318/ARTICLE/160319975#
Edit to change number of voting locations in the county to 34, as that's how TODAY'S edition of newspaper has it in their editorial.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Have Bill Clinton put on a one man show in pro Bernie precincts.
I've posted a couple of times about a guy I work with who is a Republican. He is so angry about the Republican party trying to force out Trump (he's not a Trump supporter - Kasich) that he told me today that he might have to vote for Bernie. 
I told him that if the Dem. establishment and their friends in the corp. media didn't prevent Bernie from gaining the nomination that we'd be glad to have him. Today was the 1st day he said the words - might have to vote for Bernie. I knew it was coming but it was great to hear. He loathes Hillary. If she was the nominee he said he would have to vote for Trump.
