Morgan County is one of the counties in Illinois that will be unable to provide early voting options right away in the upcoming primary elections.
County Clerk Jill Waggener announced during this morning’s Morgan County Commissioner’s meeting that ongoing objections to several presidential candidates are not anticipated to be resolved by the Illinois State Board of Elections in time for the mail-in and early voting portion of the election on February 4th.
“Currently, the objections have to go through their whole process, and until the state board goes through the objections and hears what the objections are, we cannot print our ballots or allow people to early vote until all those objections are done, in case one of the objections holds up in the hearings and that person is actually removed from the ballot,” says Waggener.
“I apologize, there’s nothing we can do for that. We just ask the public to be patient.”
Waggener says ballots and machines will be available no later than February 17th, the beginning of grace period registration and voting, by which time most challenges seeking to remove candidates from the ballot should be decided, and final ballot certifications issued by the state.
The candidates facing objections are Martin O’Malley, Hillary Clinton, Roque De La Fuente, Willie Wilson and Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party, and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio for the Republican Party.
There was no other action during this morning’s commissioner’s meeting.