(The Center Square) – With early voting just around the corner, an elections official wants to instill confidence in voters around Illinois’ election process.
Early voting for the Nov. 5 general election begins Sept. 26 in Illinois. Mail in ballot applications are in the mail to Illinois voters. Requests must be returned by Oct. 31.
Tazewell County Clerk and Recorder John Ackerman recently held a roundtable discussion to address concerns there may be this election cycle.
“The problem is lack of trust in our elections and the cure to that is local election authorities throughout the state of Illinois stepping forward to be completely fully transparent,” Ackerman told The Center Square.
Illinois’ elections are decentralized, meaning each of the state’s 102 counties have their own elections authority, with separate authorities in some larger municipalities, that independently run their jurisdictions’ elections.
Among concerns that have been raised is the increase in mail-in voting. Ackerman said there are safeguards in place, with one exception.
“If someone else is delivering your ballot to the election authority they have to fill out the affidavit, they don’t have to do that if the post office is delivering it to us or if they’re utilizing a drop box, so there is a little bit of a loophole there,” Ackerman said.
Even then, Ackerman said the signature on the mail-in ballot must match the voter’s signature on file.
Former President Donald Trump last week said he’s concerned non-citizens are being registered to vote.
“They can not let illegal immigrants vote in this upcoming election,” Trump said Thursday.
The Illinois Election Integrity Program says on their website “Illegals are unlikely to show up at polling locations to cast ballots – once their names are on the rolls, bad actors will cast VBM ballots in their names.”
State Rep. Brad Halbrook, R-Shelbyville, said in a recent video the checks for citizenship status are not strong enough.
“At best, items required to prove identity and citizenship on the mail in form are falling short,” Halbrook said. “Voter verification to be registered to vote is basically non-existent.”
Ackerman tamped down those concerns.
“There is need for us to be resilient and making sure that we are following procedures and policies that are in place to prevent that but I just don’t see that being an overwhelming challenge right now,” Ackerman said.
One thing Ackerman said is a challenge is the U.S. Postals Services returning timely mail in ballots back to elections officials.
“We saw in the primary, increased delays which caused individual’s votes to not be counted because they were received too late,” he said.
Officials have 14 days after the election for mail in ballots postmarked by election day to be returned to local elections officials and counted.
In the 2024 primary, which had around 19% voter turnout, around 380,000 of the state’s 1.5 million votes counted were done by mail. Around 14,000 were rejected.
