Rep. Joe Sosnowski joined the other Republican members of the House Executive Committee in calling for the Illinois State Board of Elections to disclose the names of the 19 self-identified non-citizens registered to vote under the state’s automatic voter registration program administered by the Secretary of State who actually voted in the 2018 General Election. Rep. Sosnowski and his colleagues made this request in a letter sent on Tuesday. Rep. Sosnowski is also calling for a public hearing to be held by the General Assembly to include testimony from the State Board of Elections.
Late last week a letter surfaced from the Illinois Secretary of State to the Illinois State Board of Elections detailing a supposed 17-month-long “programming error” that allowed the Illinois Secretary of State to register 545 self-identified non-citizens to vote in Illinois under our automatic voter registration system.
We have also learned that of those, 19 ballots have already been cast in official elections.
This is an absurd lack of compliance with state law, surfacing just a few weeks from the opening of early and absentee voting (February 6) for our state’s 2020 general primary election.
The oversight function of the Legislative Branch regarding Illinois’ automatic voter registration law is to hold the Executive Branch accountable for ensuring compliance with state law and to determine if additional legislation is needed to tighten our voter registration laws.
We’ve heard from the Democrats for the past 3 years how vital it is to protect the integrity of our elections. Now we’ve learned that Illinois Democrats implemented a program that has been automatically registering non-citizens to vote in our elections.
These are egregious breaches of State and Federal law that must be corrected immediately.
House Republican members of the Executive Committee sent a letter to Speaker Madigan and asked him to convene an Executive Committee hearing to begin an investigation into this issue. This hearing should be scheduled immediately given the timeframe for the start of early and absentee voting in the 2020 primary election.
Early and absentee voting begins on February 6, 2020. We must move quickly to protect the integrity of our elections.