On Thursday, July 7th at 10:00 AM, McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio assembled staff from his office as well as representatives from the Republican and Democratic parties to perform the required “Retabulation”. This is where ballots are re-run through the optical tabulators used on election day. The selection of ballots is done by the State Board of Elections at random and represents at least 5% of the precincts in the county. Normally, what would happen next is that the ballots would be resealed and sent to storage. But this day was different. Tirio, Bruce Johnson (representing the Republican Party), and Ruth Scifo (representing the Democratic Party) randomly selected one of those tabulators, and then randomly selected a race represented in that tabulator for a hand count. Joined by Clerk’s Office staff member Lynzi Nevitt, the trio counted ballots for a little more than two hours.
After counting more than 700 ballots, the outcome of the hand count was identical to the count from the tabulators. We expected nothing different, but as a result of this exercise, we learned a lot about the process, and what it takes in terms of space, people, and time to execute.
Special thanks to all that participated.