Some of the 574 non-U.S. citizens who were registered to vote in the 2018 election voted illegally, the Illinois State Board of Elections said.
“We do know that some of them voted” in the election, board spokesman Matt Dietrich said in a phone call on Monday afternoon, WCIA reported.
The board said on Tuesday that it confirmed 19 people who arent citizens of the United States voted in Illinois in the election.
The illegal votes were spread across seven counties.
Secretary of State Jesse Whites office blamed the registration of hundreds of non-U.S. citizens on a “programming error” in the states automatic voter registration process.
Illinois lets legal and illegal immigrants get a drivers license or state identification and, in some cases, people who obtain such IDs are automatically enrolled as voters.
“For whatever reason that technological programming error did not properly remove the individuals,” Secretary of State spokesman Henry Haupt said. “The individuals who are applying for drivers licenses were inadvertently pooled into the automatic voter registration.”
A spokesman for the office told WGN that none of the non-citizens registered to vote are in the United States illegally.
None of the following offices have issued public press releases on the situation: the secretary of state, State Board of Elections, or the office of Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker.
Pritzker said at a press conference Tuesday that there would be an investigation.
“Securing our elections, making sure that we are, that everybody knows that our democracy is working properly is a priority of mine,” he said.
Its illegal for non-citizens to vote. Punishment can include jail time or deportation.
“Thats the law today,” said Pritzker, who campaigned on welcoming immigrants to Illinois.
“The people who voted, who actually voted—the 19 people that have been identified—if they are ineligible to vote, which is what it appears they were, then they may in fact be deported.”
Just Democracy Illinois, a nonpartisan group that pushes for a modern, secure, and robust democracy, said what happened was “an unconscionable error that puts vulnerable people at terrible personal risk while undermining confidence in our elections process.”
The automatic voter registration, or AVR, wasnt the problem, the group said. Instead, it blamed the secretary of states office.
“The agencys massively delayed and error-riddled implementation of AVR hRead More – Source
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