Glitch in Vote-By-Mail Applications May Disenfranchise Voters

By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 28, 2010 4:20PM

Leave it to the Illinois Democratic Coordinated Campaign to potentially disenfranchise voters it wants to help exercise their right to vote. Thousands of absentee ballot applications sent out to registered Democrats by the IDCC contain errors that can hold up voters from receiving their absentee ballots in time to have them counted in next week's election. The mailing address on the return envelope is a PO box for the State Democratic party, which then confirms the information with voting records before sending the applications to county election officials across the state for processing.

While it's nice of the IDCC to do this, the problem is that these applications were sent out earlier this week; the deadline to have absentee applications returned for counting is today. Compounding matters, the company hired by the IDCC to mail the applications to voters have other minor errors on them, such as wrong birth dates and, in the case of the one I received three days ago, the wrong person entirely. The application lists my former downstairs neighbor, but with the wrong date of birth and my apartment address listed as her residence.

The IDCC told ABC7's Chuck Goudie that the error affects less than one percent of the ballot applications. Still, that's less than one percent too many.