The Daily Northwestern
Errors in Evanston voter rolls involving dozens of residents andstudents filed under incorrect wards and precincts have been fixedas of Thursday morning, Evanston and Cook County officialssaid.
The Cook County Clerk’s Office has corrected at least 33 errorsin which voters’ precincts were misidentified after the Evanstoncity clerk’s office began pointing them out earlier this week, saidScott Burnham, spokesman for the Suburban Cook County Board ofElections.
The final corrections to voter rolls were made Thursday, hesaid. At least 16 new voter identification cards are being issuedto Evanston voters — including some NU students — who recentlyreceived cards with misidentified wards and precincts.
Associated Student Government President Jane Lee, who recentlyreceived a voter identification card that misidentified her wardand precinct, said she was contacted by Clem Balanoff, director forCook County elections department, Thursday who explained the errorsand assured her that students would not lose their votes comeElection Day this November.
Burnham was confident that all affected students would be ableto vote.
“We’ve always had a good relationship with Northwesternofficials and we hope to keep that,” Burnham said.
ASG Senate passed a bill Wednesday urging Cook County to correctthe errors.
“We noticed a problem, we acted on it and now we got itresolved,” Lee said.
NU students comprised the largest group of voters whose newprecincts were misidentified on the rolls, said Jessica Feldman, anEvanston resident and elections volunteer approached by theEvanston City Clerk’s Office to scrutinize rolls several weeks ago.This batch of errors was corrected Thursday, she said.
“If you’ve got a block of just single family houses,” it doesn’ttake as long to correct because only a handful of residents live atany given address, Feldman said. “If you’ve got a block ofstudents, then you’ve got more.”
The vast majority of mistakes Feldman found were near redrawnward boundaries — the most obvious place to look for voters whoseprecincts have been misidentified, she said.
But a small cadre of voters who lived nowhere near redrawnboundaries were also found to have their precincts listedincorrectly. More of these “random errors” could still be sprinkledaround Evanston — and they are almost impossible to identify,Feldman said.
“The random stuff is still up in the air,” she said.
The Cook County Clerk’s Office distributed the voter rolls inJune to reflect last year’s redistricting. Evanston officials thenapproved the rolls, Burnham said, but later approached the countyafter the errors were found.
Errors in which voters accidentally are placed in the wrongprecincts on voter rolls are not uncommon after ward redistricting,officials said.
In the city of Berwyn, Ill., which redistricted its wards in2002, some voters received as many as three voter identificationcards with different precinct listings before the March primaries,said Louise Sommese, elections clerk coordinator for Berwyn. Aspokeswoman in the City of Des Plaines, Ill., clerk’s office saidsimilar precinct mistakes took place after that city’s 2002redistricting.
Reach Dan Strumpf at [email protected].
