City panel hears that a state portal glitch kept some mail-in requests from reaching Springfield election office

The Springfield City Council’s General Government committee on Wednesday pressed election staff about ballot requests that never reached the city after an online portal between the Secretary of State’s website and the local voter-registration system failed to open for a municipal election year.

“Your system and the state's system had not merged,” the committee chair said, recounting that his wife’s online request only arrived after local staff contacted the state. “Had I not notified you all, there would have been hundreds of folks that had signed up for absentee ballots that would have never received.”

Election Commissioner Gladys O'Neal Lopez said the problem was not with individual requests but with the connection: “The connection between their website and our VRA system was not connected,” she told the committee, describing the portal as a state-hosted queue that must be opened for each local election date.

Chelsea Parmenter, deputy election commissioner, described how online requests normally appear in a queue in the city’s voter-registration and information (VRA) system and are then processed. She said the portal is not open all year and recommended daily checks and a routine call to the Secretary of State’s help desk if the staff log into an empty queue when applications are expected.

Parmenter also outlined practical steps the office takes when ballots go missing: verifying addresses and phone numbers on applications, mailing follow-up letters when ballots are returned, reissuing up to three ballots, and — when necessary — delivering a ballot in person. “If they call city hall and speak to anybody that's in the office, I will drive the ballot to their home,” she said.

Committee members pressed staff about possible fixes. Staff proposed adding a regular portal-check step during the application-processing window, improving cross-agency communication about when the state portal opens, and exploring low-cost targeted mailings (for example, an insert in an existing city mailing) for seniors and other groups identified as likely to benefit from vote-by-mail.

The election office acknowledged some limitations in tracking: in state election years, voters can use the Secretary of State’s online tracking; in local election years that tracking may not reflect city records, so callers should contact the city office to confirm whether their ballot was received.

Councilors praised staff efforts to reach voters and called for a short, documented procedure the city can use ahead of the next local election. The committee did not take formal action on policy changes at the meeting; members directed staff to coordinate with the Secretary of State and report back at a follow-up virtual meeting.