EDWARDSVILLE - Madison County Clerk Debbie Ming-Mendoza confirmed that 160 ballots for registered voters living in portions of Edwardsville Precinct 3 were erroneously coded as being within the bounds of Judicial Subcircuit 1, and that a "handful" of early voters or mail voters were incorrectly allowed to vote in the circuit court judge races.
Ming-Mendoza said she accepted responsibility for the mistake. She said it occurred due to human error and she would not “throw anyone under the bus.”
She explained that the ballots were incorrectly coded because the wrong subcircuit map was posted to the county’s website.
“It’s a serious situation,” Ming-Mendoza said, “but I’m relieved because it could have been much worse. This could have been determined on Election Day. I feel 100 percent confident that the remediation of the ballots that we have will be corrected and that the programming moving forward is correct and Election Day is correct.”
She said she was notified of the discrepancy at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday and first met with the State’s Attorney’s Office and the IT Department to determine how to correct the situation.
“Nobody caught it until just yesterday,” Ming-Mendoza said on Thursday.
She said she is still in talks with the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office as to how the remediation process is handled.
“I want to be as transparent as possible,” she said, “because this is serious.”
Ming-Mendoza said she is also sending letters to the 160 registered voters affected by the mistake to explain why they were allowed to vote for judicial candidates in the primary election but not in the Nov. 8 election.
She said Edwardsville Precinct 3, which includes the area near the Edwardsville post office, is made up of more than 900 registered voters total with 160 affected by the error.
“So not everybody in Edwardsville 3 received a ballot like that,” she said.
She said that voters who had not voted prior to Thursday morning will not be affected, as their ballots have been corrected.
“When the early voting sites opened this morning (Thursday), I was confident they would get the correct ballot,” she said.
“Election Day ballots for Edwardsville Precinct 3 have been reprinted with ballot style 110,” she added. “So everyone who shows up for Election Day at a polling location will be given a ballot without the subcircuit election on it.”
On Thursday, Republican judicial candidates Circuit Judge Amy Sholar, Circuit Judge Chris Threlkeld and Tim Berkley penned a letter to Ming-Mendoza asking for her response to the situation and a detailed plan for remediation.
Ming-Mendoza told the Record that of the 160 erroneous ballots, 31 mail-in ballots including the judicial races were sent out for Edwardsville Precinct 3. Sixteen have not been completed and returned. Ming-Mendoza said two of the completed ballots have already been tabulated as election judges began processing mail-in ballots on Tuesday. Those two ballots will be handled separately.
The completed mail-in ballots that are not already in the tabulator will be recast. She explained that a team of Republican and Democratic election judges will “remake” those ballots with the judicial election excluded. She said the process will occur in front of poll watchers to ensure honesty and transparency.
“They will be remade and recast so no one is disenfranchised,” Ming-Mendoza said.
She added that “everyone” is flagging mail-in ballots for the 16 erroneous ballots that have not yet been completed.
Ming-Mendoza said that in addition to the mail-in ballots, her office determined that 13 erroneous ballots have been cast through early voting. Those are also in the tabulator. She said the 15 total ballots that are already in the tabulator cannot be changed. However, she said that when they do the “election canvas,” the ballots at issue will not be counted for the subcircuit race only. All other races on those ballots will be counted.
“They will not be part of the final canvas for the judicial subcircuit,” Ming-Mendoza said.
Primary election and the Judicial Circuits Districting Act of 2022
Ming-Mendoza said that while the ballots for the Nov. 8 election have been corrected or are in the process of being corrected, the 160 registered voters affected by this error were allowed to vote for judicial candidates in the primary election on June 28 despite not actually living in Subcircuit 1. It is too late to correct the primary election ballots, but she said it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
“There was nobody really harmed in the primary,” she said. “There were enough votes for the write-ins … that it would not have made a difference in the outcome of the primary.”
Democratic judicial candidates Barry Julian and Ebony Huddleston ran as write-in candidates during the primary election after they were removed from the ballot over errors on their nominating petitions.
This is the first year that Madison County judicial vacancies will be decided by voters in the gerrymandered judicial subcircuits due to the Judicial Circuits Districting Act of 2022. The law was rammed through the Democratically-controlled state legislature in the middle of the night on Jan. 5 without public debate. It restructured elections so that Madison County circuit judges - eight of them - are elected by voters only per subcircuit rather than countywide.
The dramatic changes forged by Democrat lawmakers in Springfield would impact Madison County elections this year, rather than allowing time for local election officials and candidates to prepare for future elections.
When asked about how quickly the legislature forced the law through in Madison County, Ming-Mendoza said, “We did the best we could with what we had.”
She had no input on the map or how and when it would be implemented. Madison County Chief Judge Bill Mudge has also said the judicial subcircuits were established without any input from the county.
The law pushed two Republican incumbents - Threlkeld and Sholar - out of contention by drawing the boundaries away from their residences.
Conversely, the boundaries were drawn in a gerrymandered way to include the affluent Fox Creek neighborhood of Julian, and the residence of Democrat candidates Associate Judge Ryan Jumper, and Huddleston to the north in Alton.
The law also was written so that the first three vacancies would occur in Subcircuit 1. Elections for the subsequent three vacancies will take place in Subcircuit 2 and the two after that will occur in Subcircuit 3.
In other state courts that have subcircuits, elections for vacancies - which occur when a judge retires or otherwise leave the bench - aren't clumped together like the law forged onto Madison County, they are staggered.
After some dust settled this year and the two Republican candidates changed their residences, Judge Mudge, a Democrat, announced that he would retire, thereby creating another vacancy to be voted on this year in Subcircuit 1, where Jumper resides. A short time later, Jumper announced his candidacy for the Mudge vacancy.
In effect, voters in the largest geographic subcircuit (3) could be waiting many, many years before casting a ballot for an elected judge. Even if that were to occur 10 years from now, the subcircuits could be redrawn following the 2030 decennial census.