Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
After much contestation and legal action against the DuPage County Election Commission, Moon Khan, a longtime resident of Lombard Ill. and Democratic candidate for DuPage County Recorder of Deeds, has secured a place in November elections.
A court-mandated re-count of ballots from the March 15 primary elections April 21 determined that Khan, who needed a minimum number of 844 votes, has secured the nomination with 170 more votes over the required minimum.
According to Khan and his legal team, it seemed unbelievable that he did not secure the uncontested Democratic nomination since it only required him to have 844 votes, and they decided to take legal action against the election commission, which resulted in a recount of the write-in ballots.
“I did this so we can know why it happened and how the system can be reformed so no other candidate will need to spend the money and knock at the door of the judicial system. I find it hard to believe that I received only one vote in my own precinct in which my wife, son and neighbors also voted,” said Khan.
Khan, who faced strong resistance from the election commission, was successful in getting re-count after obtaining a court order on April 19. The re-count took place April 21 and by the afternoon Khan had enough number of votes to win after commission judges got through the paper ballots for 342 of the 869 precincts in the county.
“Today’s re-count exposed the flaws in the voting procedures of DuPage County. It reaffirmed my personal belief in the number of votes I got. The speed with which all these numbers came up, shows that there were paramount miscalculations of votes,” Khan said.
Khan said that the results only confirmed what he knew and that he was disappointed that it took costly legal action to reveal the “truth”. Khan expressed concern that other candidates may have also suffered due to these kinds of errors.
“The common citizen should not be punished or fined for the bad behavior of the county commissioners of the election department,” Khan said.
According to Election Commission Assistant Executive Director Joseph Sobecki, the cost of Khan’s recount remains unknown and there are no policies under statute to reimburse candidates who seek a court order to get a re-count.
This time the commission has not discussed implementing any policy or changes in training for election judges, except for emphasizing that each vote must be counted regardless of whether a candidate is running unopposed. This is the second recent re-count in DuPage due to write-in issues.
Besides Khan, five Republican precinct committeeman candidates from Wayne Township have also filed a complaint with the commission, alleging that their write-in votes were not properly tallied.
The post County Candidate In Chicagoland Gets Nomination After Re-count appeared first on News India Times.
