Tuesday's long lines explained
Higher-than-expected voter turnout and
understaffing blamed
In an event reminiscent of 1992, a heated
presidential race led to swamped campus voting stations, causing long
lines of people waiting to cast their ballots even after the polls
were supposed to close.
Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden acknowledged the similarities
between this year's problems and those resulting from the 1992 election.
Dennis Bing, then Champaign County clerk, saw swamped polling places
in precincts with a large number of registered students. Despite past
problems, Shelden said there could not have been advance preparation
for the long lines that developed Tuesday.
The 1992 presidential election that caused an unexpected increase
in student voting and problems with overwhelmed campus voting stations
was somewhat similar to the race that led to this year's problems.
In both elections, a challenge from a state governor to a member of
the old administration captured the attention of the entire nation
— students included.
Shelden attributed many of the problems Tuesday to the amount of sudden
student interest in the elections.
"We had a lot of hotly contested races for Congress and local offices
and obviously the presidential race," Shelden said.
According to The Daily Illini in 1992, the nine predominantly student
precincts yielded 6,797 votes from the 9,101 people who were registered
to vote. According to the County Clerk's office, in the 13 predominantly
student precincts this year, 10,164 people voted out of the 18,944
who were registered. Student precinct numbers are sometimes skewed
because of the frequent changes in the residences of students.
At an Illinois Student Government meeting Wednesday, Eamon Kelly,
ISG member and representative of Students for Gore, questioned Shelden's
preparedness at campus voting stations. He said it was unacceptable
for students to have to wait in lines for at least an hour.
Shelden said swamped polling places resulted, in part, from the unpredictable
traffic flow of student voters. He said Pennsylvania Avenue Residence
Halls, Lincoln Avenue Residence Halls, Snyder Hall and the University
YMCA were the only overwhelmed voting stations.
"In one precinct, they showed up more steadily. In another, they showed
up all at one time," Shelden said.
Shelden spent time Tuesday afternoon helping at the YMCA. He said
that he had no unassigned election judges, but he was forced to call
the county offices to request additional help from the staff there.
"We'd like to have a contingency plan, but unfortunately, we don't
have enough judges," Shelden said. "It's hard to find people who are
trained and know what they are doing."
Shelden added that less experienced campus election judges also contributed
to the lines that were reportedly as much as 100 people long.
"The Democratic election judges were very green," Shelden said.
Gerrie Parr, Champaign County Democrats chairwoman, was responsible
for selecting campus election judges for her party. She emphatically
said she wanted full control over assigning individual judges to each
student precinct.
"I insisted on being responsible for putting judges in all campus
precincts," Parr said.
Parr emphatically denied Shelden's criticism of the judges she selected.
"I had experienced people — at least one in every precinct — who knew
what was going on," Parr said.
Instead, Parr tossed the responsibility for long lines back to Shelden,
saying that most of the problems were because of understaffing by
the County Clerk's office.
"We don't have enough staff assigned to these precincts," Parr said.
Parr said she had talked with Shelden about the possibility of placing
seven election judges at campus stations instead of the traditional
five. However, Parr alleged that Shelden refused her request on the
grounds that expected turnout did not warrant the presence of extra
judges. After several attempts, Shelden could not be reached again
to comment.
Democratic Election Judge Ralph Langenheim was stationed at the YMCA
when Shelden arrived to assist. He said that in spite of the full
staff of election judges, everyone was busy during the afternoon.
"We worked as rapidly as we could," Langenheim said.
As a judge with more than four years of experience, Langenheim said
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