With the primary state elections only a few weeks away, early voting in Illinois seems to have taken a shaky start for a Republican state representative candidate who witnessed his selected votes get changed by the voting machine to favor the Democrats, according to Illinois Review.
On Monday, Jim Moynihan was at the Schaumburg Public Library to cast his vote for the 2014 midterm elections in Chicago when the incident occurred.
"I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent," Moynihan said. "You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat."
As Moynihan continued to select several Republican candidates on the ballot, the touch screen voting machine repeatedly switched his choices to register votes for the opponent Democrat in each race instead.
It was only after he pointed out the glaring mistake to the election judge and demonstrated the machine's obvious glitch that he was eventually able to properly vote for his candidate's party, including his own race, Fox News reported.
However, Moynihan still expressed disappointment with the experience.
"Clearly, I am concerned that citizens will be unable to vote for the candidate of their choice, especially if they are in a hurry and do not double check their ballot," added Moynihan. "I cannot say whether or not this was intentional, but Cook County voters deserve better and should not have their right to vote suppressed."
"Be careful when you vote in Illinois. Make sure you take the time to check your votes before submitting," he also warned his followers on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director Jim Scalzitti told Illinois Watchdog the machine was taken out of service and tested.
"This was a calibration error of the touch screen on the machine," Scalzitti said. "When Mr. Moynihan used the touch-screen, it improperly assigned his votes due to improper calibration."
In addition, Scalzitti stressed that Moynihan's votes would not have been registered without a final confirmation at the end of the ballot procedure.
In order to boost voters to go to the polls ahead of election day and encourage a higher turnout among the electorate, President Obama cast his vote early for the Illinois state elections on Monday, New York Daily News reported.
"The most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen," the president told reporters at the center, as he took advantage of the first day of early voting in Illinois. "I'm so glad I can early vote. It's so exciting. I love voting."
"Everybody in Illinois [should] vote early. It's a wonderful opportunity," he added.
