Illinois primary 2020 recap: Blame game ensues in election hobbled by coronavirus, marred by low turnout

Jennelle Cottage, 80, waits to vote at an early-voting station inside the Carter G. Woodson Library in Washington Heights on Chicago’s South Side — the third polling place Cottage visited Tuesday.

Chicagoans voted in a virtual ghost town Tuesday, prompting a war of words between government officials and a battle of sorts by an 80-year-old woman who — after visits to three polling places — finally was able to cast her ballot.

The voter turnout in Chicago, as throughout the suburbs and most of Illinois, was extremely low because nobody wanted to catch the coronavirus. Voters by the thousands had voted early or by mail. Thousands of others took a pass.

By mid-afternoon in Chicago, fewer than half the usual number of ballots had been cast. Voters straggled in off half-empty streets — much of the city was self-isolating — into half-empty polling places that nonetheless weren’t always ready for business.

Some polling places had been shifted to new locations on short notice, leaving voters feeling lost and confused. Other polling places opened late. Others were undermanned because COVID-19 had scared off judges.

At other polling places, last-minute replacement judges were not sufficiently trained, as anybody could see.

As the sun set, city elections officials were looking at a turnout in the range of 35% or so. Similar abysmal turnout numbers were being reported in suburban Cook and the collar counties.

At Napleton Northwestern Chrysler in West Ridge, only 86 of the 900 registered voters outstanding in the 15th precinct had come through the car dealership, 5950 N. Western Ave., to vote by mid-afternoon, said volunteer Joyce Wall. “All primaries are slow, but this is beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” said Wall, 60, who has been serving as an election judge for 20 years.

Screen_Shot_2020_03_17_at_9.50.52_PM.png — Joyce Wall said the low voter turnout is beyond anything she’s ever seen.

Election experts had warned for weeks that robust and credible elections would be tough to pull off given the threat of the coronavirus. But Gov. J.B. Pritzker had insisted on pushing ahead in Illinois, arguing that the alternative — suspending the balloting midstream, even after hundreds of thousands of people had already voted early or by mail — would be worse.

That difference of opinion, apparently hot and roiling just beneath the surface, blew up almost immediately Tuesday, about 3¹⁄₂ hours after the polls opened at 6 a.m.

In a call with reporters, Chicago election board spokesman Jim Allen ripped Pritzker’s team for not postponing the election, complaining that “seniors are tweeting and posting comments about being fearful of going into polling places or serving on election day.”

Allen told reporters that the city had urged the governor’s office, in a phone call back on March 11, to cancel in-person voting in favor of mail-in ballots. But, he said, he was told by the governor’s legal team to proceed as planned. “It was a snowball we could all see coming down the hill,” Allen said. “There’s nothing magical about March 17 unless you’re St. Patrick.”

Pritzker’s team punched back immediately, calling Allen’s claim “a lie” and saying the governor’s office had offered Chicago election day assistance, including National Guard troops to work polling places.

“Instead of accepting help or offering any solutions of their own, the Chicago Board of Elections decided to wait until Election Day to get on a call with press and make politically charged accusations,” Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said.

Pritzker himself, at a later press briefing, accused the city’s election officials of trying to “shift the blame for their failings.

“It is not a time for political posturing,” the governor said. “It is not a time to complain that you’re being asked to do uncomfortable things, to make hard choices, to go above and beyond in your responsibilities.”

Sun-Times reporters, spreading throughout the Chicago area, witnessed dozens of scenes of polling place judges, sometimes wearing masks and gloves, patiently directing equally patient voters to voting stations. In Bridgeport on the South Side, Jennifer Smith, 44, ventured out in the early afternoon to vote, fully aware of the threat of the virus.

“Everything seems so uncertain, I just wanted to make sure I got to vote,” Smith said. “There are a lot of people on my social media, who are older or who have older relatives, who are really concerned about [coronavirus], and they’re saying they’re not going to vote.”

A couple of miles away in Washington Heights, Jennelle Cottage, 80, did her darndest to vote, but the city sure made it hard.

At about 9 a.m., Cottage started out for her usual polling place, a nursing home a few blocks from her home, only to be told that the voting site was closed.

She went home for several hours, until a friend told her she could vote at a nearby school. But when she arrived at the school at about 2 p.m., poll workers told her voting machines from her precinct had not been delivered.

Undeterred, Cottage — who has not missed a chance to vote since she cast her first ballot in 1960 — set out from the school to the Woodson Public Library, where she joined some three dozen other people waiting in a small auditorium. Thirty minutes later, finally, she was ushered into a small office to fill out her ballot.

“I take voting seriously, alright,” Cottage said. “I don’t know how they managed to screw this up.”

The problems weren’t just in the city. There was frustration in the suburbs as well.

At a polling place in Tinley Park, the complaint was an absence of promised hand sanitizers, an essential tool in warding off the coronavirus.

“The only bottle of hand sanitizer we have is from an election judge who brought one in personally,” said Laura Lukasiewicz, an election judge. “We’re not able to wipe off voting machines.”

In Barrington, one polling place did not open until 9:20 a.m. — 3 ¹⁄₂ hours late — because the coronavirus had led to nervous election judges dropping out.

Back in Chicago, in Lincoln Park, election judges at 9 a.m. turned away voters because they had yet to receive election supplies. They urged voters to go to another polling place that would accept provisional ballots — or come back in the evening.

At a polling place in a church in Bronzeville, judges opened for business several hours late because of internet failures and the refusal of touchscreen machines to accept cards. The poll workers gave up and switched to paper ballots.

At a polling place on the West Side, in the Revival Fellowship Church of God, judges and voters shared a single bottle of hand sanitizer, presumably until it ran out. But the voters there at about lunchtime — a handful of folks — were in a cordial mood all the same. They bumped elbows with a laugh instead of shaking hands.

When one young man, 18-year-old Jaden Carter, stepped up to vote for the first time in his life, everybody applauded.

“I just really wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders,” he said.

Jaden, a high school student, was a bit of an outlier among Chicago voters. The turnout skewed heavily toward older voters who, ironically, also are at the greatest risk of harm from the coronavirus.