Specifics are still needed as to how and when improper ballots for dozens of addresses in Edwardsville will be remedied, according to a spokesperson for Madison County Republican judicial candidates.
Elections chief Debbie Ming Mendoza acknowledged on Thursday that 160 ballots for registered voters in 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 three circuit court judge races.
Ming Mendoza told the Record that she accepted responsibility for the mistake and called it a "serious situation." She said that the ballots were incorrectly coded because the wrong subcircuit map was posted to the county’s website.
"It doesn’t matter if it’s just a handful of votes," said Deb Detmers, on behalf of Circuit Judges Chris Threlkeld and Amy Sholar, and attorney Tim Berkley. "It’s about voters having trust that their votes are being cast properly and counted fairly."
Among other things, the judges asked Ming Mendoza in an Oct. 27 letter whether a court order would be required in remedying the errors, and what statutory authoriy her plan would rely upon.
In a three-page response to the judges, Ming Mendoza detailed when and how she became aware of the balloting errors and steps that were taken with the State's Attorney's office and solutions proposed to the Attorney General's office.
Detmers said that while the judges appreciate the response, "We asked for statutory authority for her remedies, that hasn't yet been provided."
"Given this problem was not caught until the judicial campaigns caught it through the help of volunteers, is there any plan for a complete audit of the district lines for the subcircuit?"
The Attorney General's office is currently investigating suspected voter fraud related to write-in ballots during the June 28 primary.
Madison County Chief Judge Bill Mudge sealed the investigation, after State's Attorney Tom Haine petitioned to seal and asked for an outside prosecutor, citing a conflict of interest. A second request by the Record to unseal remains unanswered.
The investigation was opened Aug. 18 and stems from approximately 39 suspicious write-in ballots discovered from Venice and other addresses within the boundaries of judicial Subcircuit 1, an area that mostly runs along the western border of the county.
There were two declared write-in candidates seeking their Democratic Party's nomination during the June 28 primary and in the controversial subcircuit - attorneys Barry Julian and Ebony Huddleston - running for circuit court vacancies.
Julian faces Threlkeld; Huddleston faces Sholar. Berkley faces Associate Judge Ryan Jumper.
Remedying the ballots
Ming-Mendoza said Thursday that of the 160 erroneous ballots, 31 mail-in ballots including the judicial races were sent out for Edwardsville Precinct 3. As of Thursday, 16 had not been completed and returned. Ming-Mendoza said two of the completed ballots had already been tabulated as election judges began processing mail-in ballots last Tuesday. Those two ballots will be handled separately, she said.
The completed mail-in ballots that are not already in the tabulator will be recast, she said. 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 had 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.”
Julian and Huddleston ran as write-in candidates during the primary election because 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.”
In her letter to the judges, she wrote, "As we all know, the General Assembly imposed a very short timeframe to implement these entirely new subcircuit boundaries for the November 8, 2022 general election."
She had no input on the map or how and when it would be implemented. Chief Judge 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. They moved their residences earlier this year in order to be eligible to run.
Conversely, the boundaries were drawn in a gerrymandered way to include the affluent Fox Creek neighborhood of Julian, and the residences of Judge Jumper in Edwardsville, and Huddleston 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.