Mayoral ballots without Emanuel's name on lockdown

Nearly 300,000 potential souvenirs from this year's thrill-a-minute Chicago mayoral race will remain on lockdown, at least until the election has passed, an election board official said.
The city election ballots printed without Rahm Emanuel's name are "sequestered" at a Waukegan printing company, said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
"They're going to remain under lock and key right now," he said.
Illinois appeals judges booted Emanuel from the ballot Monday after finding the former White House chief of staff ineligible to run under a law that requires candidates to have resided in the city for at least a year before the election. The printers were about 280,000 ballots into a run of some 2 million voting forms Tuesday when the Illinois Supreme Court tossed a gavel into the press gears.
Justices ordered that no more Emanuel-free ballots be printed until they decided the issue.
The justices reversed the Appellate Court and reinstated Emanuel on Thursday. Printing had already resumed at Lake County Press with Emanuel's name among the contenders for the city's top job.
As for the eventual fate of the ballots?
"We just don't know,'' Allen said.
The total election cycle will cost about $28 million, and unusable ballots will add no more than $20,000 to the total tab, Allen said.
Lake County Press officials declined to comment on the unusable ballots or the measures taken to guard them.