Steve Sandvoss made the announcement about his resignation at an
elections board meeting Tuesday morning.
Sandvoss has been on leave since April 5 following a personal
online extortion attempt that he reported to the Illinois State
Police. The ISP denied a freedom of information act request by
Capitol News Illinois seeking details of the reported incident.
The board has not released details about the online extortion
attempt, other than that an agency internal investigation by its
chief information security officer “revealed that no SBE data or
systems had been compromised in the incident,” according to
Tuesday’s news release.
Matt Dietrich, ISBE spokesperson, said that internal
investigation is completed.
The board has approved Bernadette Matthews to serve as interim
executive director until a permanent replacement is named.
Matthews previously served as assistant executive director of
the agency, a role she has held since 2017, according to her
LinkedIn page. Before that, she was the agency’s deputy general
counsel for nine years.
Sandvoss, 55, joined the Illinois State Board of Elections in
1988.
He became executive director in January 2015 after serving as
the agency’s general counsel starting in 2004.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan
news service covering state government and distributed to more
than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the
Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation.
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