Illinois election integrity advocate raises concerns

(The Center Square) – With elections coming down the pike, an Illinois election integrity advocate is raising concerns.

In Illinois, you can request permanent mail-in voting to where the local election official sends out a mail-in ballot for every election. Carol Davis is with the Illinois Election Integrity Program. She said mail-in voting has greater potential for fraud.

Davis suggested voters request a mail-in ballot, not a permanent one, and return it when they physically go to vote as early as they can vote.

“That way if they do say ‘well, hey, someone’s already cast a vote-by-mail ballot in your name,’ then you’ve got 30, 40 days before election day to call the sheriff,” Davis said.

Early voting for the Nov. 5 general election begins Sept. 26.

Davis said legal fights continue to address the state’s voter rolls that she says are full of inactive voters. Her group recently got access to voter rolls and found nearly 1 in 10 registered voters are inactive.

“People are parked on there that should not be on there and, of course, it opens the possibility that those names could be used by nefarious actors to cast vote-by-mail ballots,” Davis told The Center Square.

The Illinois State Board of Elections acknowledged that of nearly 8 million active registered voters, 839,119 are “inactive registered voters.” A spokesman said in an email to The Center Square that a voter becomes inactive when an election authority’s attempt to contact them are unsuccessful. If that fails and the voter doesn’t show up for two subsequent federal elections, the inactive voter is canceled.

“So having a significant number of inactive voters is indicative of the state’s ongoing voter list maintenance efforts,” said Illinois State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich. “They’re basically voters who are awaiting cancellation but federal law requires that we give them two federal election cycles (that’s two consecutive even-year elections) in case they reappear at their current address.”

Another legal front Davis is monitoring is working to limit counting in federal elections to election day, not up to two weeks after the election as is allowed in Illinois. While a case challenging that in Illinois has been beaten, eyes are on a case in Mississippi, where they have up to five days to count ballots.

“Hoping that there’ll be good outcomes there that will add strength when we come back to Illinois to try and hit that again,” she said.

Another concern Davis has is with the potential that ineligible individuals like non-citizens could be registering to vote with lax safeguards on federal forms or through automatic voter registration programs.

“Federal law prohibits election officials from making proof of citizenship a requirement for voter registration,” Dietrich said. “The [Secretary of State] is under no such prohibition and is authorized to check citizenship as part of the licensing process.”

Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias’ office said in a memo July 12 to county clerks and boards of election commissioners that a recent law updating the Temporary Visitor’s Driver's License law did not change the voter registration process through his agencies.

“Various electronic protection measures are already in place that fully omit the voter registration process for all TVDL applicants due to the fact that they are non-citizens,” said senior legal advisor Brenda Glahn.

Specifically, Glahn laid out current programs within the Secretary of State’s office that prevent voter registration from applicants who present either a foreign passport or consular ID card, prevent voter registration from launching for those that are tagged with non-U.S citizenship status and prevent voter registration process for any applicant who does not have a Social Security number, among other programs.

Despite that, Davis still worries safeguards are not in place and advocates for a federal measure awaiting action in the U.S. Senate to require proof of citizenship for voters in federal elections.