Clerk’s office says brief ballot scanner outage in Schaumburg Monday did not affect vote counting

The Cook County clerk’s office is allaying concerns about ballot counting after a scanner broke down temporarily Monday at a Schaumburg early voting site.
Daily Herald file photo/2019

The Cook County clerk’s office is allaying concerns about ballot counting after a scanner broke down temporarily Monday at a Schaumburg early voting site.

“Voting was not affected by the issue,” said Frank Herrera, the clerk’s director of communications. “As is protocol when there is an issue with the ballot scanner, all ballots are placed in the Alternate Ballot Box — a locked box within the VSC (Voter Supply Carrier) where ballots are stored — until the scanner can be fixed.”

A voter who cast a ballot by machine at Schaumburg’s Trickster Art Gallery Monday morning posted a concern on social media about the fate of her vote after seeing a video of a technical breakdown at the polling place after she’d left.

The scanner was restored by 2 p.m.

Even those who vote by touch screen receive a printed paper ballot that is treated exactly like a regular paper ballot as it is initialed and fed through the scanner by an election judge, Herrera explained.

After an issue like Monday’s occurs, once the scanner is repaired the Alternate Ballot Box is unlocked and all the ballots inside are fed through the scanner by the team of election judges. There is at least one judge of each political party present for this.

“If the ballot scanner took her ballot, it was accepted right then and there,” Herrera said. “If there was an issue and the ballot scanner did not take her ballot, it was then stored in the Alternate Ballot Box until the scanner could be fixed and it was then fed through the scanner by the election judges later that day after the repair — it would be accepted as soon as it was scanned in. Either way, her vote will count along with the other 760 voters who cast ballots at Trickster (Monday).”