Gina Liguori, 56, is a Cook County resident who didn’t get to vote today. She said she wanted to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey.
Liguori said she entered her polling place at Rutherford Sayre Park, a place she has voted at for many years and has never had a problem with before, at about 7 a.m. this morning, Nov. 8 and was met by nine people who were eating doughnuts.
“They changed my ward because it was part of another ward it shouldn’t have been in due to somebody running for office, I thought that was part of the problem…they had me fill out a form and they were trying to look up my name and they could not. They said that the problem was actually my precinct. I was precinct three and it changed to precinct five. And because of the change they said I couldn’t cast a vote. I waited there for a whole hour…they called downtown. The couple behind me was having the same issue,” said Liguori.
Liguori said nine people were at this polling place. Liguori said they told her to leave and that they had said to not expect a call back.
The Communications Director of the Chicago Board of Elections Max Bever told us her complaint was not placed with the Board of Elections. Bever said he entered her complaint after we had called and notified him of the problem with her being turned away. He said if folks have problems like Liguori’s to call: 312.269.7870
Liguori said this form looked like it was a form that addressed the machines and how to vote away from the machines.
“The machines were not able to call up my name because of the precinct changed,” said Liguori. “I did fill out the form, I had to fill out the form three times. Everyone was so clueless as to what was going on.”
Liguori told us she wanted to voted straight Republican. Liguori said she thought it was because her ward was changed…originally she was in the 36th Ward and then they changed her Ward to the 29th. Liguori claims this was because they were trying to cut out an Alderman on her block.
“I thought that was the issue,” said Liguori. “That was not the issue. It was the precinct change. They couldn’t call me up on the system. After one hour of my time they told me to not come back and they didn’t care that I couldn’t vote.”
Liguori had her voter card and she showed them her ID.
In LeRoy there seemed to be a glitch with the voting machines, but the McLean County clerk said that issue has been resolved.
“We usually have hiccups within the first hour,” said Kathy Michael. “Those are fixed. One thing that is not going well there is that there was a person who was outside, not an election judge, telling people that the machines are live and that they can be hacked. That is not true. The disinformation is starting.”
At 7 a.m. Heyworth had 102 voters turn out, that three precincts. Michael said the voter turnout overall this morning was steady to a little bit higher than normal in a midterm.
