St. Clair County Clerk Tom Holbrook said that Republican write-in candidate for State's Attorney Ron Duebbert received seven fewer votes of 223 needed to secure the nomination.
After polls closed on election night, online county results showed that the write-in candidate for the office Duebbert seeks had received 655 votes.
But more than 400 votes were determined to be not valid after ballots were counted by election judges, Holbrook said. As it stands, Duebbert currently has 216 votes.
For write-in votes to count, a person has to fill in an oval and write the name of the candidate who is registered as the write-in candidate.
Duebbert was the only Republican write-in candidate for the office of State's Attorney, and no other candidate had filed paperwork to run as the party's nominee on the ballot.
Holbrook said that a voter could fill in the oval and write in the name Mickey Mouse and the voting machine would count it in unofficial results posted online, on election night.
St. Clair County elections supervisor Laura Kaemmerer said on Tuesday that 444 mail in ballots still have to be counted, a figure which could change by the time they are counted on March 31. Of those, 379 are Democrat ballots, 62 are Republican and three non-partisan.
"Considering the COVID-19 virus I am not sure if this will change, or how many people we will allow to attend the counting of the ballots," Kaemmerer said.
St. Clair County GOP chairperson Barb Viviano said that if possible she would be present for the March 31 counting of mail-in ballots, and that if Duebbert did not receive seven more votes she would consider challenging the initial results.
Another option for Duebbert to have his name on the November ballot would be slating by the county GOP.
Viviano said she wasn't sure whether she would slate Duebbert as the nominee, a process that has to be done by June 1.
"I don't know if (a candidate) loses if they can be slated," she said.