McLean County Times

Early voting will now continue in Bloomington after a glitch was fixed that was occurring on early ballots.

WAND reports the Bloomington Election Commission said the glitch was fixed. It was previously forced to suspend early voting when it realized that the 11th District Court race had been left off of approximately 1,500 early ballots.

There was also a misprint on the ballot that left out the option to retain two circuit court judges, Judges Jennifer Bauknecht and Matthew Fitton.

"We're working on our plan for that right now, with the goal of giving everyone the opportunity to vote in the judicial retention races," Bloomington Election Commission Executive Director Tim Mitchell said. Mitchell also said that they were working on a firm plan and once that plan was in place, the commission would announce how it will move forward to fix the issue.

Commission Chair Denise Williams said the problem was related to the two incumbent judges and that their names were included on ballots that were prepared by the McLean County Clerk's Office but were missing from the Bloomington Election Commission's ballots, according to WGLT.

"I'm sorry this happened in Bloomington because I believe in the mail-in voting process," Williams told WGLT. "I know that it can be fixed, and I know that we can have a good election."

Williams said they were trying to figure out how to get corrected ballots to those who had already voted. The State Board of Elections became aware of the mistake after a voter caught the mistake on Oct. 1. The early voting was then suspended until Oct. 3 when the glitch was fixed. Early voting began Sept. 24.