Illinois Republicans seek attorney general’s help after Champaign County ballot errors

SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois Republican Party is asking the state attorney general’s office to intervene in Champaign County’s election process after the county clerk distributed hundreds of ballots that mislabeled General Assembly districts.

Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons, a Democrat who is also fighting a federal indictment for alleged obstruction of justice, announced his office learned on Oct. 1 that voters in nine precincts were mailed ballots with a data error.

WCIA-TV in Champaign quoted Ammons as saying certain ballots were affected within those precincts: “On those 19 affected ballot types, what you would see, sometimes, is the 101st race that should have been the 103rd, or the 104th that should have been the 102^nd.”

He blamed the error on a vendor, though he said his office did not catch the mistake when they checked the ballots before distributing them. Ammons told WCIA the county could identify all mail ballots that contained errors and replace them, but some had already voted.

“It has affected 28 people who cast their ballot already that we cannot change, but the remainder of those we’re able to catch,” Ammons told WCIA. “We’ll intercept all of the incorrect vote-by-mail ballots if they’re sent in and the replacement ballots will go out.”

In a news release on Monday, the Illinois House Republican Organization called for state intervention.

“With federally indicted County Clerk Aaron Ammons overseeing the response, the Attorney General’s Office should step in immediately to ensure every voter receives the correct ballot and every valid vote is counted,” House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, said in a statement.

The 104th House District is expected to be one of the closest races in the state between incumbent Rep. Brandun Schweizer, R-Danville, and Danville Democrat Mary Catherine Roberson. Schweizer won reelection in 2024 by just 269 votes.

“My last race was close,” Schweizer said in a social media post. “I take seriously the consequences even a small number of incorrect ballots can have. We cannot afford to wait for another problem to surface.”

Roberson said in a statement she is also considering asking the courts to oversee the election.

The 103rd District, meanwhile, is represented by Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, who is the clerk’s wife. She is also fighting federal corruption charges and is facing write-in challenger Keith Smith. Aaron Ammons is charged with obstruction of justice in relation to Carol’s indictment.

Voting resumes in Champaign County

The county initially paused early voting upon learning of the mistake, but it reopened Monday after the ballot errors were rectified.

But Republicans want the attorney general’s office to use its unit of attorneys that monitor elections to oversee Ammons’ response.

McCombie and Illinois GOP Chair Bob Grogan wrote to the attorney general that their request is nonpartisan, aimed at making sure every voter has a correct ballot and can have confidence in the election’s administration.

“Providing hundreds of voters with incorrect ballots is no mere technical issue,” the letter said. “Even as of this writing, there is not enough known about how the errors occurred, who exactly are the affected voters, and exactly how the Clerk’s Office will attempt to remedy these errors.”

Ammons did not immediately respond to questions sent by Capitol News Illinois to his government email address.

Raoul’s office also did not immediately comment on the Republicans’ letter or respond to an email from Capitol News Illinois.

Republicans wrote they want the attorney general to monitor the response to the errors and resumption of voting, verify all affected voters are identified, ensure records related to the incident are preserved, determine if Ammons should take more corrective action and provide the public with more information on the scope of the errors and steps taken to fix them.

Ammons is facing his own Republican challenger this November, Alan Anderson. There’s no indication that this race was affected.

History of problems

Ammons has been criticized in the past for other mistakes in administering elections.

Computer problems hit the clerk’s office on Election Day in 2022, which Ammons said was a cyberattack. Only Kankakee County also reported computer problems that day, The News-Gazette reported, though the clerk there said they didn’t suspect it was because of a cyberattack.

On Election Day in 2024, Champaign County had a network outage that impeded voting, which Ammons also said at the time was a vendor’s fault.

Ahead of this year’s primary, Republican governor candidate Ted Dabrowski sued Ammons for misprinting his name on ballots, calling him “Tad” instead.

The Ammonses are set to stand trial in Springfield on Dec. 7. The trial was scheduled for November, but Aaron Ammons requested a delay so he could administer the election.

Prosecutors allege Carol Ammons engaged in schemes to convert campaign funds to personal use and to steer state grant funds to nonprofit organizations that employed her daughter. Aaron Ammons is also accused of engaging in a conspiracy to cover up the schemes, including instructing one potential witness to “muddy the waters” with the FBI, according to the indictment.

Other jurisdictions

DuPage County also briefly had problems at the beginning of early voting at the end of September. The county briefly suspended voting because the voting system was pulling up incorrect birthdays for some voters, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Grogan, a DuPage County resident, said he was turned away when he tried to vote early.

“They say you can’t fix stupid, but you can vote it out of office,” he said in a statement.

Early voting was paused for one day before resuming.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.