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VOL. 12 • NO. 47
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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2016
Election night serves up victories, disappointments, much relief that it’s over Cullerton defeats Lewis in nail-biter; Conroy stomps Holan; DiCianni out
tion results right from the commission’s servers. Apparently, that link Tuesday evening was filled with not only failed but also made the surprises, groans and triumphs un- whole system slow down. til the biggest collective gasp of all – the one that came at 1:30 a.m. Duckworth garners when the Associated Press and other an early win One of the earliest elections to be media outlets officially declared that Republican nominee Donald Trump called on Nov. 8 was the race for would become the 45th President of U.S. Senate which brought victory to Democrat Tammy Duckworth the United States. Throughout Election night, local results trickled in and anxieties were high, compounded by the fact that the DuPage Election Commission had difficulty posting the results right away, a problem that seems to plague them at virtually every election. At 7 p.m. when the polls closed, the web site said no results would be posted until 7:30 p.m., but the earliest posting came in after 9 p.m. Candidates were left waiting in frustration to learn their respective fates. By Dee Longfellow
FOR THE INDEPENDENT
over incumbent U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R). She obtained 2,908,363 votes to his 2,150,099, garnering 54.4% of the total. [Note: These numbers have been updated since Election night, but were still unofficial as of press time..] In the 5th Congressional District, Democrat Mike Quigley easily won another term with almost 70% of the vote over his Republican challenger
Vince Kolber. The vote was 201,983 to 82,931. In the contest for the seat vacated by Tammy Duckworth in the 8th Congressional District, Raja Krishnamoorthi handily beat Elmhurst resident Pete DiCianni (R) 141,138 to 101,893 (58.1% to 41.9%). It was a hand-wringer to the bitter end for Villa Park resident Tom Cullerton, but in the end, he squeaked
past challenger Seth Lewis and won his second term of office in Illinois Senate District 23 by a vote of 42,731 (50.83%) to 41,342 (49.1%). Incumbent Deb Conroy won a staggering victory over Heidi Holan 23,161 to 16,192, garnering 58.85% of the vote.
See ELECTION, Page 4
He did it, no, SHE did it!
Tom Cullerton and Deb Conroy clown a bit while standing on chairs at Crazy Pour in Villa Park to address their supporters on Election night. Both retained their seats, Cullerton in the State Senate and Conroy in the State House.
Inside:
Police Reports...........6 Sports ����������������������9 Travel................25-27 Classifieds..........22-23
PAUL DELGUIDICE PHOTO Villa Park Independent
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Election Commission: new software a disappointment Later in the week, the Independent learned that the DuPage County Election Commission officials had been excited to roll out their brant new computer software system on Election to expedite returns and provide results more quickly Instead the site contained only error messages and indications that results would be available at any minute… still it took more than two hours. According to Robert Saar, executive director of the Election Commission, the servers were “stressed by a combination of factors,” including an unexpected update that consumed much of the server’s processing space. There was also a link directly to ABC 7 News that was supposed to allow the TV station to receive elec-
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