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URBANA — After all, there won’t be a two-hour extension of Election Day in Champaign County.

At a hearing Tuesday at 1:30 p.m., State’s Attorney Julia Rietz told Judge Ben Dyer that the county was withdrawing its request for an extension after early morning troubles left voters without the opportunity to cast ballots throughout the county.

“At this point, we believe it would be in the best interest of voters and the election process to withdraw our petition,” Rietz said.

After the hearing, Rietz said an attorney representing state Republicans indicated the party would oppose the motion if it were filed.

“They think the par 7 entry plan was the appropriate remedy,” Rietz said.

Another contributing factor: Unless county Republicans agreed to an exception, votes cast after 7 p.m. would have required the use of provisional ballots, slowing the process, said County Clerk Aaron Ammons.

Tuesday afternoon’s hearing, scheduled quickly, was triggered by system outages that left voting machines inoperable at Champaign County polling places from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. The issues were resolved shortly after 8 a.m., Ammons said, at which point his office notified voters on social media. :

“Clerk Ammons is working to extend voting hours until 9 p.m. Once this is confirmed, we will provide you with an update. Thank you for your patience!”

In a subsequent statement, issued at 4 p.m., Ammons said his office had been “informed that anyone voting after 7 p.m. should vote with a provisional ballot, otherwise the election as a whole could be at risk of being contested . hours without resorting to provisional ballots that required the support of the local Republican Party and, according to the chair, they were not willing to partner with the clerk’s office to extend voting hours until 9 p.m.

“The most important thing to note is that if you queue at 7 p.m., you will be allowed to vote, regardless of the length of the queue. Every eligible voter will be processed if they queue at 7 hours and all voters will be allowed to vote The locations are universal sites, meaning any eligible voter can vote anywhere in Champaign County, regardless of where their home precinct is located. .

Champaign County Republican Chairwoman Susan Mantell told the News-Gazette she “never had a discussion” with Ammons, adding, “We should follow the law.”

Voters waiting in line at several locations earlier in the day said election officials told them technical difficulties delayed the process. In some cases, those waiting in line left because it was unclear how long it would take to remedy the situation.

Ammons blamed the problem on the county’s “vendor,” saying counties beyond Champaign were affected by an outage at Batavia-based Platinum Technology Resource.

Sangamon County, which uses the same provider, is also reportedly having “problems,” according to a local television report.

Don Gray, clerk of the county that includes Springfield, said Tuesday that those reports were greatly exaggerated.

“Contrary to some inaccurate media reports and social media posts, all polling places in Sangamon County are fully operational and open since 6 a.m. without any issues affecting registered voters,” Gray said. “While some counties in Illinois have experienced massive technical issues, Sangamon County has not.

“This morning, as part of a statewide vendor error, we experienced a minor inconvenience: the new same-day voter registration process required an additional phone call to our office downtown from the polling place. Voters could still register in person at the courthouse without any problems.

Back in Champaign County, Colleen and Mark Ruebke, from rural Urbana, went to vote at the Somer Township Building shortly after 6 a.m. “and there seemed to be some sort of problem. They said that for the At the time, the polling station was closed.

Colleen Ruebke said election officials took their contact information and indicated they would contact them when the issues were resolved.

“It was very frustrating,” she said. “We’re retired, so we don’t have to go to work. I feel bad for the people who were standing in line and saying they couldn’t wait any longer and had to go to work. “

Sterling Frye of St. Joseph went to three polling places this morning – without success. He had to go to work in Champaign and said he hoped to be able to vote later today.

“Really frustrating,” he said. “I’m used to voting early, but this year I was going to stick it out and vote on Election Day. I’m going to do it and it’s being stolen from me.”

As of dawn today, nearly 52,000 voters had already cast ballots in the general election, Chief Deputy Clerk Angie Patton told The News-Gazette. This represents more than half of the total number of voters in the last presidential election (96,185 in 2020).

As of midday as of Tuesday, the clerk’s office said, 10,493 Election Day votes had been cast at the county’s 65 polling places.

Tuesday’s outage is reminiscent of the malfunctions of 2022, when connectivity and server performance problems slowed down voting in some polling stations. At the time, Ammons attributed the problems to the county vendor being the target of cyberattacks and had pushed the office to improve its technology and security.

“I understand that this is incredibly frustrating, but it is important that everyone maintains their commitment to exercising their right to vote,” outgoing Sen. Paul Faraci, a Champaign Democrat, told The News-Gazette Tuesday morning. “…I encourage everyone to stick with it because every vote counts.”

His Republican opponent had a different vision.

“I can’t believe we have this problem,” Jeff Brownfield said. “There was a similar issue a few years ago. This should not be acceptable to our community.”

A separate problem — power outages due to overnight storms — left voters who traveled to the Hays Center in West Champaign without the ability to vote early on Election Day.

Power was cut around 8:15 a.m., affecting at least 400 customers, according to Ameren’s outage map. Service was restored Tuesday morning.

Area counties

Other county clerk offices in the area are not reporting any issues similar to what Champaign County is experiencing.

In Ford County, County Clerk Amy Frederick said, “We are up and running and everything is good. »

She said there were 880 early votes cast, which is “just a little bit below” the last presidential election.

“2020 was just ridiculous, and this one has been ridiculous,” Frederick said.

In Douglas County, County Clerk Judi Pollock said there were no problems with voting today.

“We’re golden,” Pollock said. “We don’t have any problems with Champaign.”

A total of 1,600 early votes were cast in Douglas County, which she said will be “right on track with where we were in 2020, which is very busy.”

In Piatt County, the county clerk’s office spokeswoman said there were no voting problems.

The spokeswoman said she did not have time to discuss early voting numbers.

In DeWitt County, Deputy Clerk Sherry Wilson said the office has no problems. As for the number of anticipated voters this year, she said she doesn’t have exact numbers.

“It’s a lot. Over 1,000,” Wilson said. “It’s more than 2020.”