The state of Illinois just caved and admitted a very ugly truth – non-citizens voted in the 2018 election in the state.
The Illinois State Board of Elections made the stunning admission and blamed a mistake or as they call it “programming error” in the state’s new automatic voter registration system.
WCIA reported that the Illinois State Board of Elections acknowledged that out of 574 non-U.S. citizens who were inadvertently registered to vote in Illinois, an unknown number of them may have voted illegally in the 2018 election.
“We do know that some of them voted” in the 2018 election, spokesman Matt Dietrich said in a phone call on Monday, though his office was not immediately able to determine how many of them may have voted, or how many may have been legal citizens who simply filled out their state form incorrectly. Dietrich expects the elections agency will have more specific answers when state workers return to their desks after a government holiday.
Secretary of State Jesse White’s office admitted it was at fault for the “isolated” incident, and assured the voters that the “programming error” in the state’s new automatic voter registration process has since been repaired.
Illinois law allows immigrants who are not U.S. citizens to get a driver’s license or state identification. Both state and federal law prohibits non-citizens from participating in American elections.
On December 18th, White’s office sent a letter to the State Board of Elections notifying them that despite several safeguards, a programming malfunction in the agency’s electronic keypads improperly registered 574 non-American citizens to vote.
“For whatever reason that technological programming error did not properly remove the individuals,” Secretary of State spokesman Henry Haupt explained. “The individuals who are applying for driver’s license were inadvertently pooled into the automatic voter registration.”
That error most-likely triggered a stream of pamphlets, post cards and mailers to invite the non-citizens to vote. Once a person is registered to vote, their name and information is made a part of public record. Local election officials routinely mail voting instructions to the household, and political campaigns send them advertisements persuading them to vote for specific candidates or causes.
It’s still unclear how many of the 574 people impacted may have actually cast a ballot in 2018, in part, because state employees at the elections board couldn’t be reached on a state holiday. A spokesman for the agency expects to have a more specific answer on Tuesday. Non-citizens who vote in American elections can face swift consequences, including immediate deportation.
“If that person voted, that’s a huge problem when it comes to the federal government,” state Representative Tim Butler (R-Springfield) warned on Monday. “That’s a deportable offense for this person. And if that’s the case, that’s something that’s on the Secretary of State’s office for allowing that offense to happen.”
