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 Illinois wrongly listed 1,151 residents as not registered to
vote ahead of the March 17 primary, according to a report by the Chicago
Sun-Times.
Secretary of State and election officials are unsure exactly how the error was
made but notified local election offices of the problem March 9. They do know
the problem occurred when residents were applying for their REAL ID. The problem
does not come from a computer glitch, but rather from a clerical error which
could be caused by many different things.
At this point, election officials don’t believe the error has stopped anyone
from voting. Illinois allows voters to register to vote when they show up at
their polling location for early voting or on election day. Local election
judges were told in the March 9 letter from the State Board of Elections that
they are to let affected individuals vote.
Election board spokesman Matt Dietrich told the Sun-Times about 200 registered
voters in suburban Cook County, 140 in Chicago, 100 in DuPage County, 80 in Will
County, 60 in Lake County, 50 in Kane County and 20 in McHenry County were
impacted by the error.
In total, 87 local election authorities were affected.
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Earlier this year, the Secretary of State faced an
error that allowed non-U.S. citizens to become registered to vote.
WCIA-TV reported 574 non-citizens were registered to vote despite
identifying as non-citizens and checking the “no” box when prompted
to registered to vote while renewing their licenses. Of these
individuals, 19 were able to vote in the 2018 election.
Additionally, about 4,700 16-year-olds were
mistakenly forwarded to the board of elections by the state’s
automatic voter registration system after registering for a driver’s
license. The system is supposed to stop ineligible voters or those
who check “no” from being sent to the board of elections for voter
registration.
In response, Illinois Republicans have called for the suspension of
Illinois’ automatic voter registration system and want the system to
be audited.
“We’ve been assured for over two months now that problems have been
fixed, yet problems continue to come up,” said state Rep. Tim
Butler, R-Springfield, at a news conference on March 11. “I’ve lost
complete confidence in the Secretary of State being able to carry
out this program.”
Over 800,000 people have registered to vote via automatic
registration since it was passed in 2017 by the General Assembly,
according to the Daily Herald.
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