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Mayoral election recount over; outcome depends on judge's ruling
Originally Posted Online: June 22, 2009, 11:39 am
Last Updated: July 09, 2009, 1:30 pm
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By Brandy Donaldson, bdonaldson@qconline.com
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ROCK ISLAND -- The outcome of the April 7 mayoral election now hinges on a judge's ruling on two over-votes and whether to count 582 touchscreen votes. The recount is over. Rock Island County Clerk Dick Leibovitz verbally reviewed all the ballots Monday, precinct by precinct, that were called into question during the process. A case management hearing with Rock Island County Circuit Court Judge Mark VandeWiele is set for Thursday, the day by which Mr. Leibovitz must submit his recount report. The hearing into the recount results is scheduled for Thursday, July 2. Mayor Pauley took office May 4 after the official canvass showed he won by 13 votes -- 3,066-3,053 -- over Mr. Levin, who won a court ruling for a recount. According to Mr. Leibovitz' review Monday, 27 votes are slated to be deleted from the election results, primarily because ballots were not initialed by poll judges, as required by law. Judge VandeWiele has ruled all non-initialed ballots be deleted from the election results. In total, 19 of the deleted votes were for Mayor Pauley, seven for Mr. Levin and one was for David Kimbell, who withdrew from the race prior to Election Day, but remained on the ballot. Two "over-votes" were discovered during the recount, on which both candidates' names were marked. In both instances, an X was drawn through Mr. Pauley's oval. Mr. Levin contends those votes should count in his favor. Judge VandeWiele will ultimately make that ruling. Not considering the over-votes, Mr. Pauley is still ahead in the race by one vote. Both touchscreen votes and paper ballots that are optically scanned are used in Rock Island County elections. Paper ballots are supposed to be initialed by election judges, while the touchscreen votes, cast electronically, are not. Those votes are assigned a unique identifying number. Mr. Leibovitz said he will suggest in his report to Judge VandeWiele those ballots also not be counted since they aren't initialed. There were 582 such votes cast. How these votes broke down among the candidates isn't know; Mr. Leibovitz simply segregated them during the recount. "I have no idea what the outcome will be," Mr. Leibovitz said Monday. "I'll submit the numbers to the judge. It will be up to him what happens then. "My only concern was protecting people's right to vote if they were eligible to vote. The results of the election are not important to me. I don't care who wins or loses." 
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