The Chicago Board of Elections has admitted to a major error in failing to count over 10,000 mail-in ballots in the March 19 Democratic primary for Cook County state’s attorney.
This revelation came after the city’s director of public information announced he had made an error by omitting them.
According to ABC Chicago, Democratic candidates Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III are tied with 50 percent of the vote, with O’Neill Burke leading Harris by just under 4,800 votes.
The resolution of these mail-in ballots will determine the race’s winner.
Chicago Board of Elections Public Information Officer Max Bever said voting will resume on Sunday and he regrets that thousands of mail-in ballots that were delivered to his office for counting were left out, adding that he takes full responsibility for this error.
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“I traded speed for accuracy in reporting out numbers this week as quickly as I could,” Bever said. “I truly regret this error on my part and for the confusion that it has caused the voters of Chicago. I will share updated numbers only when they are accurate and verified.”
Bever added that O’Neill Burke and Harris have been informed about the error, and poll watchers from both of their campaigns will be in attendance during the counting process.
The incident has drawn attention on social media.
Chicago announces the existence of an additional 10k mail-in ballots that were “mistakenly” not mentioned until now.
Many (if not most) of the ballots are from dropboxes, meaning postmarks are NOT required…
This will have MAJOR implications.
Just 4,000 votes total now… pic.twitter.com/YoITgpN3wv
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 24, 2024
All jokes aside, for the information chief of the @ChicagoElection Max Bevers to just magically find a trove of mail in ballots out of the blue shows the sheer incompetence in #Chicago and #CookCounty Politics. In a private sector job, that kind of incompetence will have you…
— Donald N. Muhammad CPO-EPP (@Agent1Security) March 24, 2024
Illinois state law gives election officials until April 2 to count mail-in ballots that arrived late but that were postmarked by March 19.
However, the results of this primary race are anticipated much sooner.
Either O’Neill Burke or Harris will face off against Republican Bob Fioretti and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski in the November general election.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, mail-in voting has been rife with issues, including accusations of voter manipulation and fraud.
Due to the pandemic and concerns about in-person voting, there was a massive increase in absentee voting requests.
The pandemic led to an unprecedented number of absentee ballots, and many voters who mailed their ballots close to the deadline found their votes uncounted because they arrived too late or lacked a postmark due to postal service errors.
In New York’s 2020 Democratic primary, a significant number of mail-in ballots were disqualified and not counted due to missing postmarks or late arrivals.
Similarly, the 2020 primary in Wisconsin was marked by controversy over the handling of mail-in ballots.
However, many voters reported not receiving their ballots in time, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only ballots received by Election Day could be counted, leaving those received afterwards uncounted despite the delays.
Ohio also faced a similar scenario.
