Reporters Probing Election Records Get Cold Chill

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A clerk in Cairo, Ill. said she destroyed all the ballots from the 2002 gubernatorial election because the storage room where they were kept needed to be cleared to allow for a new air conditioning installation. Gloria Patton said the records were dumped a few days before reporters for the Scripps Howard News Service filed a Freedom of Information request to look at 3,451 punch card ballots. Patton’s predecessor was convicted of mutilating ballots from the 2000 election.