Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he will not pause automatic voter registration in his state despite recently learning that hundreds of noncitizens were registered to vote.
“The glitch that was found by the secretary of state’s office, and that was investigated, has been overcome, it appears,” Pritzker said at a press conference.
“There’s no reason to have an across-the-board pause, especially when the glitch has been fixed, and we’re going to have hearings to make sure that we’re ferreting what went wrong with this glitch,” he said.
The Illinois State Board of Elections announced earlier this month that at least 547 noncitizens were registered to vote and 19 of them did vote in the 2018 election.
Secretary of State Jesse White’s office admitted fault but assured the public that the “programming error” was fixed.
Some watchdog groups aren’t so sure.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a voter integrity watchdog, filed a request for Illinois voting records to determine if the noncitizens were registered via DMV transactions and whether or not the state is taking the necessary steps to identify other registered noncitizens.
“States have no business experimenting with automatic voter registration until they can zero out the risk of ineligible noncitizens passing through traditional Motor Voter,” Logan Churchwell, communications director at PILF, said.
Voter fraud and illegal voting, in general, have been a longtime problem in the state. The Heritage Foundation identified over 40 cases of voter fraud in the state since 2000.
