Illinois State Board of Elections provides insight on issues with Champaign County election

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WAND) — The State Board of Elections provided more insight into the technical issues that delayed election day voting in Champaign County for two hours.

The board said an outage reported by Platinum Technology, a voter registration system vendor, kept officials from distributing ballots in Champaign County. Platinum Technology is used in 27 other counties in the state.

However, the polling set-up in Champaign County was unique, said Matt Dietrich with the Illinois State Board of Elections. "Rather than having pre-printed ballots that are handed out, Champaign county was relying on a system where every voter comes and checks in, the ballot is printed specifically for them, for their precinct, and then they voted. What happened was, the voter registration data that they needed to generate those ballots, was locked up because of problems with their vendor."

The other 27 counties in Illinois pre-printed their registered voter ballots before the elections. Only Champaign County voters were unable to cast ballots during the outage.

A petition was filed to extend voting hours in Champaign county on Tuesday, but was quickly withdrawn. The polls closed at 7 p.m.