Printer Takes Blame For Problem With Oversized Ballots
CHICAGO (CBS) -- In an otherwise lackluster Illinois primary, with ridiculously low voter turnout, the issue of bad ballots in several counties could go down as the highlight.
In at least 25 counties, many paper ballots were a fraction of an inch too big for the counting machines, so they couldn't be inserted in the tabulation machines as is.
Election judges were forced to either cut off the sides of paper ballots, have voters use touchscreen voting machines, or put aside the oversized ballots to count by hand.
CBS 2's Derrick Blakley went looking for answers at the suburban printer that screwed up.
Over the least 12 election cycles, ABS Graphics has printed 36 million ballots with no problem, until Tuesday.
Kristen Vos, marketing specialist at ABS, said, "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused any of the government agencies or voters. And we regret that this happened."
At least 25 counties statewide were affected by the oversized ballots.
Larry Mandel, president of Government Business Systems, which sent out the ballots supplied by ABS Graphics, said the ballots were "a little wide down at the bottom right-hand corner, so they were unable to actually process the ballot."
Addison-based ABS readily took the blame for the problem
"We did identify one production line, in which the width of the ballot was less than 1/32nd of an inch wider than it normally should be," Vos said
Some election judges trimmed the ballots by hand to fit. Others put them aside to be counted later. But election authorities and the printer insisted the number of ballots affected were relatively small.
Vos said the problem should have been caught before the ballots were shipped.
"Most definitely, we would want it to be caught before anything went out, because we know the serious nature of this business," she said.
ABS insisted it did test the ballots on tabulation machines, and they tested out fine. Those procedures are now being reviewed.
DuPage County and one other election district requested additional, right-sized ballots on Tuesday due to the problem. ABS printed them and got them to polling places.
As for who pays any additional costs to taxpayers, that depends on the contract between the local election board and the election materials supplier.
The problem affected a relatively small number of ballots. DuPage officials said fewer than 500 ballots didn't fit the voting machines, out of 100,000 votes cast. Even so, every ballot got counted.
