DuPage County Auditor Bill White has been declared the winner of the 2020 county auditor race, DuPage County Circuit Judge Craig Belford ruled Monday.
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After months of recounts and court hearings, Belford ruled against most of incumbent Bob Grogan’s requests and declared the final margin of victory in White’s favor was 66 votes, up by eight votes over the full recount tally.
“William White was, is, and remains the winner of the Nov. 3, 2020 election for DuPage County auditor,” Belford said Monday during a hearing of what he described as a “historic case.”
White, a Democrat, originally led by 75 votes in fall 2020. The court-ordered full recount of the race in October — a first in DuPage County history — that reduced his margin of victory to 58 votes, 232,710 votes for White and 232,652 for Grogan, a Republican seeking reelection.
Belford ordered 10 ballot envelopes that had Xs as initials to be struck from the final vote total, nine from Grogan’s count and one from White. Belford said while an X can be counted as a signature, an X cannot count as an initial.
Grogan’s request that 40 disputed ballots be removed from the count was rejected by Belford, arguing Grogan was attempting to shift the burden of finding evidence back to the county. Grogan had not demonstrated “clear and convincing” evidence supporting his argument, the judge said.
“This is not how it works. It is not the election authority’s burden to prove ballots are valid,” he said.
Belford did rule in favor of Grogan’s request that 69 unopened envelopes with ballots found during the recount not be counted. The 69 ballots had 36 votes for White, 26 votes for Grogan, and 7 with no auditor vote.
Belford said allowing the votes to be counted more than a year after the election and months after the recount was not something he wanted to do.
“It is too late for that now,” he said.
Grogan’s argument that there were “procedural defects” during the recount also was rejected by Belford. The judge said Grogan never specified what should happen if a defect existed, such as an alleged violation of an agreement between Grogan’s camp and the DuPage County Clerk’s Office to separate vote-by-mail envelopes with an undated certification.
However, Belford did allow 20 vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on or before Election Day but sent to the wrong address to be counted. Belford said it wasn’t the voters’ fault their ballots were mailed to a wrong address and arrived at the proper election authority after Election Day.
Another 19 vote-by-mail ballot envelopes postmarked after Election Day but counted were struck down by Belford. The envelopes no longer had the ballots in question and it would be impossible to determine who the voters picked for county auditor, he said.
Even if the 19 votes were removed proportionally for White and Grogan or all 19 were removed from White’s final vote total, the county auditor would still have more votes than his challenger.
“There simply remains no way for Mr. Grogan to prevail,” he said.
Grogan accepted Monday’s decision with mixed feelings. He said recount reform is needed at both the county and state level.
“Here we are, it took more than 16 months to get results,” Grogan said. “It cost me more than $100,000 and I disagree with some of the judge’s rulings but I accept that the judge ruled.”
Grogan said “it is highly unlikely that I will appeal” Belford’s decision. He did, however, say it was “highly likely” he would challenge White in the next auditor election; Grogan served as county auditor from 2008 to 2020.
“I wish Mr. White well, it’s an office that does important work. He hopefully will serve it well for the next three-ish years.”
White supported Belford’s ruling, saying it validated his election and also the election process.
“I think the people of DuPage County can have supreme confidence in how elections are run here,” he said.
White said he spent about $50,000 in legal fees and assistance.
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County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek, in a statement issued after the ruling, said she was glad to have the decision made so her office can focus entirely on this year’s election cycle.
“The recount did not change the result that Bill White was the certified winner,” Kaczmarek said. “For public trust in the foundation of democracy – our elections – we must accept the facts. The 2020 election is over.”