Schuyler County Error Leaves GOP Senate Candidate Off Ballots
The specimen ballot for Schuyler County in western Illinois. A ballot mistake left GOP candidate Kathy Salvi off the ballots of a few hundred early voters.
NOTE: This story was originally posted for subscribers only. To receive subscriber-only newsletters and content, click here.
Around 45 early votes were cast and around 300 mail-in ballots were sent in a small county west about 50 miles west of Springfield that listed the wrong name of the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
The ballots in Schuyler County listed Peggy Hubbard instead of Kathy Salvi as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. Hubbard was the runner up to Salvi in the June primary.
“It was a human error. There was a mistake made.” Schuyler County Clerk Mindy Garrett said. “It was missed in proofing of our ballots.”
Garrett says she learned about the misprint Tuesday and immediately stopped early voting.
Because every county clerk (or Election Commission, like in the case of the city of Chicago) has jurisdiction over running its own election, ballots are not sent to or approved by the State Board of Elections. Garrett says ballots are proofed by “multiple” people in her office before they’re printed.
Each jurisdiction is required to do a pre-election tabulation test of their machines, but Schuyler County hadn’t conducted one yet.
There are fewer than 5,000 registered voters in Schuler County and fewer than 250 total returned ballots impacted. There has never been a statewide race in Illinois that has been close enough for that number of disputed votes to impact the outcome of a race.
But Salvi’s statement on the issue raised questions about the integrity of the whole election.
“Illinois voters need to have confidence in our elections and this unacceptable error does absolutely nothing to provide that comfort,” she said. “There needs to be accountability at the county level for this mistake and with the Illinois Board of Elections for approving the ballots. Voters spoke during the June primary and now they are being disenfranchised, period. We need answers from our election officials as to how this happened and transparency to show inaccurate ballots have not been approved elsewhere in the state.”
Garrett, a Democrat who has worked in the office since 2005 before being elected clerk in 2014. She is an elected Democrat in a county Donald Trump won with 71% of the vote in 2020, says politics played no role in the error.
“I don’t look at it politically at all,” she said. “There was no ill intent whatsoever. The politics don’t even come into play for me, personally. It’s not politically driven at all.”
Garrett says 307 incorrect ballots had been mailed out and about half of those had been returned. She said the county was sending corrected ballots to everyone who had requested a ballot by mail.
For those who voted early, it may be a little more tricky. Hubbard is not a certified candidate, so votes for her would not be counted, a State Board of Elections official said. It isn’t clear if or how anyone who cast a ballot early in the county will have a chance to correct their vote.
Garrett says her State’s Attorney is working with the Salvi campaign and the Illinois State Board of Elections are continuing to discuss legal remedies to correct as many ballots as possible.
State Board of Elections Spokesman Matt Dietrich says there is no recollection of an election authority making a mistake of this magnitude in the past.
But there are potentially some voters who won’t have their vote for U.S. Senate counted in that county.
“I truly apologize this happened on my watch,” said Garrett.