For an Election Lasting More Than 24 Hrs, Seek Medical Help

Your LakeCountyEye has some good news to report from Mini-Super-Tuesday: Election numbers are finally trickling in from McHenry County.

Haha, if you lost sleep Tuesday night waiting to see who won in Illinois, it's not because you totally forgot about daylight savings time. Thank McHenry County instead -- which totally bungled the election. According to the Northwest Herald, problems already ...

started with the opening of the polls at 6 a.m. with the failure in some precincts of the electronic poll books used to verify voters' registration, and continued into Wednesday. As of late Wednesday – a full 24 hours after the closing of county polls that were extended 90 minutes by emergency court order – County Clerk Mary McClellan's office had yet to post the provisional ballots cast during that hour and a half. A number of county and state races were too close to call. It's a given among veteran McHenry County candidates something always goes wrong in the county on Election Day.
McHenry County primary election: 'Worst-managed' in decades or isolated problems?

One contest impacted was the heavily mail-bombed Senate District 26:

Though he was leading a tight three-way race in the 26th Illinois Senate District Republican primary, Dan McConchie was not ready to declare victory on Wednesday afternoon.
Dan McConchie leads close 26th Illinois Senate race, not declaring victory yet

Dan McConchie was reluctant to declare victory because his opponent, Casey Urlacher, did unexpectedly well in McHenry County. Despite the fact that the McHenry County GOP prides itself on being solidly pro-life -- and that Dan McConchie lobbies for Americans United for Life (a pro-life organization) -- Urlacher (the Mayor of Mettawa) beat McConchie in McHenry County by 6 percentage points. The only plausible explanation for this sort of ballotbox behavior would have to be that Casey Urlacher is the brother of an Ex-Chicago Bear, Brian Urlacher. And that they share the same last name.

One political scientist summed up the situation on the ground in McHenry County: "I don't think anyone in McHenry County ever got tipped off that there was supposed to be an election on March 15."