Ballot Shortages, Long Waits To Vote Were Caused By ‘Coding Error,’ Elections Board Says
With a Bachelor’s degree in Education and Journalism from Loyola University Chicago, Lisa Nguyen has dedicated her career to covering educational issues in the city. She has worked for WBEZ, focusing on local initiatives and reforms affecting Chicago schools.
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CHICAGO — A coding error in the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners’ system for calculating ballot quantities caused shortages at some polling places on Election Day, leading to long waits for voters, officials said Wednesday. The error resulted in some precincts receiving too few ballots of certain styles, even though the board said the total number of ballots provided to every precinct was correct. In some cases, the quantities of different ballot styles were transposed, leaving some polling places with an oversupply of one style and insufficient supply of another, according to Julie Metea, spokesperson for the elections board. The problem affected some of the city’s so-called split precincts, where voters receive different ballot styles depending on the election districts in which they live. Chicago had 491 split precincts out of 1,291 total precincts during Tuesday’s election, Metea said. The board’s IT department has already implemented additional automated valida