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URBANA — When 7 p.m. rolled around on Tuesday and the results started pouring in from the East Coast states on the highlight of the day — Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump – the lines at the local level remained long, full of voters young and old ready to cast their ballots for the next Champaign County Physician, Auditor and State Representatives.

More than 100 students waited mostly in the Illini Union, with officials hoping to wrap up by 9:30-10 p.m. The parking lot outside Champaign’s Meadowbrook Community Church was still full, as it had been most of the day, with about 50 people. voters lined up.

Voters had up to 7 to queue up to vote after an effort to extend the window by two hours was scuppered.

At a hearing at 1:30 p.m., State’s Attorney Julia Rietz told Judge Ben Dyer that the county is withdrawing its petition for an extension after early morning snafus left voters without the ability to vote countywide.

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

After the hearing, Rietz said an attorney representing state Republicans said the party would object to the petition if it were filed.

“They believe the 7-tilt plan was the right remedy,” Rietz said.

Another contributing factor: If county Republicans didn’t agree to an exception, votes cast after 7 p.m. would have required the use of provisional ballots, slowing the process, County Clerk Aaron Ammons said.

The quickly scheduled hearing Tuesday afternoon was prompted by system failures that rendered voting machines inoperable at polling places in Champaign County between 6 a.m. and 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 confirmed, we will provide an update. Thank you for your patience!”

In a later statement issued at 4 p.m., Ammons said his office had been “informed that anyone voting after 7 p.m. will have to vote with a provisional ballot or the entire election could be in jeopardy to be contested. There is the possibility of extending the mandate. hours without using provisional ballots that required the support of the local Republican party and, according to the chairman, were unwilling to partner with the clerk’s office to extend voting hours until 9 p.m.

“The most important thing to remember is that if you are in line by 7pm, you will be allowed to vote no matter how long the line is. 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 lined up at several locations today said they were told by election officials that technical difficulties delayed the process. In some cases, people in line left because they weren’t sure how long it would take to fix the situation.

Ammons blamed the county’s “vendor,” saying counties beyond Champaign were affected by a failure of Batavia-based Platinum Technology Resource.

Sangamon County, which uses the same provider, was also reported to be having “issues,” according to a local television report.

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

“Contrary to some inaccurate media reports and social media posts, all polling places in Sangamon County are fully operational and open as of 6 a.m. with no issues affecting registered voters,” Gray said. “While some Illinois counties have experienced mass 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 downtown office from the precinct voting. Voters could register in person at the courthouse. no problem.”

Back in Champaign County, Colleen and Mark Ruebke of rural Urbana went to vote at the Somer Township Building shortly after 6 a.m. “and there seemed to be some kind of problem. They said that at the moment the polling station is closed”.

Colleen Ruebke said election officials took their contact information and indicated they would be in touch 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 in the queue who said they couldn’t wait any longer and had to get to work.”

St. Joseph’s Sterling Frye went to three polling places this morning – no luck. He had to go to work in Champaign and said he hoped to be able to vote later today.

“Really frustrating,” he said. “I usually vote early, but this year I was going to hold out and vote on election day. I go to do this and it was stolen from me.”

As of today, nearly 52,000 voters have already cast ballots in the general election, Chief Deputy Angie Patton told The News-Gazette. This is more than half of the total number of voters the last time the president was on the ballot (96,185 in 2020).

As of noon Tuesday, the clerk’s office said 10,493 votes had been cast in the county’s 65 polling places on Election Day.

Tuesday’s outage is reminiscent of outages in 2022, when connectivity and server performance issues slowed voting at some polling stations. At the time, Ammons attributed the problems to the county vendor that was the target of the cyber attacks and prompted the office to upgrade its technology and security.

“I understand this is incredibly frustrating, but it’s important that everyone remains committed to exercising their right to vote,” state Sen. Paul Faraci, D-Champaign, told The News-Gazette Tuesday morning. “… I encourage everyone to stick with her because every vote counts.”

His Republican opponent had a different take.

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

A separate problem — power outages from overnight storms — left voters who showed up at the Hays Center in West Champaign unable to vote early on Election Day.

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

the counties in the area

Other county clerks’ offices in the area are not reporting problems similar to those facing Champaign County.

In Ford County, County Clerk Amy Frederick said, “We’re up and running and everything is good.”

She said 880 early votes were cast, which is “just a fraction of” the last presidential election.

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

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

“We’re golden,” Pollock said. “We have no problem with Champaign.”

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

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

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

In DeWitt County, Deputy County Clerk Sherry Wilson said the office has no problems. As for the number of early 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.”