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Voting
Quick Hit
by Matthew Blake
1:37pm
Mon Apr 9

Guzzardi To File Recount In State Rep Race Against Berrios (UPDATED)

After apparently losing his election challenge against 39th District State Rep. Maria Berrios (D-Chicago) by 125 total votes, Will Guzzardi said today that he would file a recount with the Chicago Board of Elections. Read more »

Quick Hit
by Matthew Blake
4:30pm
Wed Mar 21

Guzzardi Wants Every Vote Counted In 39th District Race Against Berrios (UPDATED)

With incumbent 39th District State Rep. Maria Berrios up by all of 72 votes, according to the Chicago Board of Elections, challenger Will Guzzardi says that his campaign will push the city to count the remaining ballots, and that his campaign may ask for a recount.

“We are going to first make sure every vote gets counted – that absentee and provisional ballots get counted,” Guzzardi told Progress Illinois. Read more »

Quick Hit
by Brandon Campbell
12:54pm
Wed Mar 21

Mitchell Camp Confident Of A Win Over Johnson In IL 26th District House Race (UPDATED)

With one final precinct left to report its total votes, Democratic 26th Illinois House District hopeful Christian Mitchell's communications director, Dave Miranda, says he is confident that his candidate has won.

"In 2010, only 92 people voted in that precinct," Miranda told Progress Illinois in a phone interview Wednesday morning. "Even if every voter from 2010 cast their vote for Kenny Johnson, he would still lose."
Read more »

Quick Hit
by David Milton Brent
2:12pm
Tue Mar 20

Tales From The Polling Places In Illinois' 5th Senate District (VIDEO)

Only a small trickle of voters walked through the doors this morning at the Chicago Public Library branch in Bucktown-Wicker Park, a polling location for the 32nd ward. An election judge stepping out for a smoke break looked up at the sunny, cloudless sky and shook his head. “Can’t be the weather,” he said.
Read more »

Quick Hit
by Aricka Flowers
8:58am
Tue Mar 20

It's Election Day. Go Vote!

Election day is here! Do you know where to cast your vote?

Cook County Clerk David Orr says it is especially important for suburban voters to double check the location of their polling place before heading out to vote due to changes under the remap.

Read more »

Quick Hit
by Aricka Flowers
3:40pm
Wed Feb 29

How To Vote By Mail (Video)

Early voting started this week and Cook County Clerk David Orr has released a one-minute video to help make the process easier for those interested in casting their votes from home.

"All registered Illinois voters can vote by mail," Orr said in a release. "It's as easy as 1-2-3."

Read more »

Quick Hit
by Adam Doster
1:10pm
Mon Nov 8, 2010

The "Voter Fraud" Canard

We go through this charade every election cycle. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Republicans claim that Democrats and their allies are coordinating to steal the election through massive voter fraud campaigns. Here in Illinois, Senator-elect Mark Kirk and the Republican Party dispatched election lawyers to "vulnerable precincts ... where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat." When the election actually rolls around, those partisan officials surely don't prevent the theft of votes; widespread voter fraud is insanely complicated to pull off and thus never happens. Indeed, as Demos' Tova Andrea Wang wrote last Thursday, there was a "sudden silence from the fraud-mongerers and Tea Party poll watch groups" because they could not find "one case of substantiated fraud at the polling place." But the media takes the political stunt seriously, so the GOP wails about the "problem" every year. In doing so, they diminish the credibility of the electoral system and lay the groundwork for more sophisticated voter suppression tactics. More from Wang:

It is well established through academic research, reports from elections officials and law enforcement statistics that voter fraud at the polling place is almost non-existent. The motivation for ginning up this bogeyman is to encourage activities such as vote caging and challenges designed to intimidate certain groups of voters and ultimately enact policies such as proof of citizenship and voter ID laws that will make it harder for disadvantaged groups to exercise their right to vote. Such efforts must continue to be combated as weapons of disenfranchisement rather than fraud fighting.

What's most infuriating about the voter fraud canard is that our voting system still has legitimate problems. In Illinois, poll workers throughout the state acknowledged confusion over who was eligible to file a regular or provisional ballot. The Election Protection Coalition, for example, received complaints that some election judges were requiring individuals on a list of "suspended voters" to cast provisional ballots even though they were entitled to a regular ballot if they provided required identification. Four years ago, plenty of Illinois' provisional ballots were rejected for a variety of reasons ranging from registration list errors, address changes, and a lack of provisional ballots at polling places. If the GOP was serious about preserving the franchise, they would have worked with the Attorney General's office to clear up this confusion before November 2. But ensuring that all voters get the chance to cast a ballot isn't really one of their top priorities.