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Home » News » Archives » Agreement Reached in Post-2000 Election Lawsuits Spell Out End to Failed Punch Card Voting System in Illinois
Agreement Reached in Post-2000 Election Lawsuits Spell Out End to Failed Punch Card Voting System in Illinois For Immediate Release September 25, 2003 CHICAGO - Voters in future Illinois primary and general elections will go to the polls with more confidence in the system used to record and count their votes as a result of a series of comprehensive settlement agreements presented to a federal judge in Chicago today by lawyers representing several election jurisdictions (including the state�s largest voting district in Cook County), the Illinois State Board of Elections, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The agreements commit election officials in seven specific voting districts to taking immediate steps to scrap the flawed punch card ballot system in favor of newer, more accurate and reliable technology. The agreements require these local election officials to do everything possible to purchase and implement new voting systems for their jurisdictions in time for the statewide primary election in March 2006. In addition, the Illinois State Board of Elections agreed in the court filings today to work with the plaintiffs to develop a plan for using newly-available funds to improve voting systems statewide and to work to secure passage of legislation in the Illinois General Assembly that will allow for the use of the newest voting technology. �Today�s inclusive agreement marks a critical step forward in the effort to retire the outdated, error-prone punch card voting system that has left uncounted the votes of thousands of citizens in recent national and statewide elections,� said Harvey Grossman, Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. �The punch card system had a particularly egregious impact in predominantly minority voting districts and needed to be fixed. These agreements jump start the progress toward reforming the system for recording and counting votes in our state.� The agreements filed with United States District Court Judge Amy J. St. Eve resolve two lawsuits filed in response to the November 2000 Presidential election. In that election, more than 120,000 votes for President in Cook County were not counted, more than six percent (6%) of all the ballots cast in the county. The percentage of votes not counted was dramatically higher in precincts with a percentage of minority voters greater than 90%. The ballot error rate in Alexander County was 7% for the same election. These high error rates were especially disturbing when compared to error rates of less than 1% in voting districts throughout the state that used new, more reliable optical scan technology. In response to these alarming figures, lawyers for the ACLU of Illinois filed a lawsuit in January 2001 on behalf of a class of African Americans who reside and vote in several voting districts in Illinois as well as the State Board of Elections. The lawsuit, Tiimuel Black v. William McGuffage, charged that use of these separate systems � with their very different results � violated provisions of the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Claus of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A month later, lawyers for MALDEF brought a similar lawsuit on behalf of Latino voters. The two cases were consolidated in October 2002. Settlement agreements entered today cover seven specific voting districts: the City of Chicago, Cook County, East St. Louis, Alexander County, Sangamon County, Will County and Whiteside County. In these areas, election officials pledge to make �best, immediate, and continuing efforts� to purchase and to implement a new voting system by the statewide primary election scheduled for March 2005. Additionally, the local and county officials say they will work within the Illinois General Assembly for passage of legislation that changes state election law to allow for the use of new voting technologies in the State of Illinois. The Illinois State Board of Elections promised, in a separate agreement, to appoint two representatives of the plaintiffs to the committee it has formed to develop a statewide plan regarding the use of federal funds that will be available to purchase new voting equipment under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, adopted last year by Congress. Additionally, the State Board also agreed to make �all reasonable efforts� to secure passage of legislation in the Illinois General Assembly that would allow the use of �Direct Recording Electronic� voting systems in Illinois, nad also promised efforts to obtain funds to purchase new voting systems. The ACLU of Illinois hailed today�s agreements as a means of . �The import of McCormick Place in the economic and political life of Chicago and the nation is obvious,� added the ACLU�s Schwartz. �Because the facility is operated by the State of Illinois, the managers have an obligation to insure that all viewpoints have an opportunity to be heard in the public areas of the convention center � fostering critical discussion about important issues.� CASPIAN is a national, grassroots organization opposed to business practices that invade consumer privacy. The organization opposes the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices to tag and track individual consumer products. CASPIAN also has voiced strong opposition to the development and implementation of the Electronic Product Code (EPC) network, a system that is designed to uniquely number all RFID tagged items and connect them to computer databases via the Internet. This technology is to be the subject of next week�s conference at McCormick Place. |
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