The Independent View: IL Court Order Mandating ‘Late Voting’ Next Week

An IL Court order was issued last night to mandate the County allow voters turned away from the polls last Tuesday, due to ballot shortages, to cast a “late vote” in that election Monday through Friday of next week.

This may be a national precedent, certainly one in the State of Illinois. It’s also one that, the Illinois State Attorney General is now moving to block.

An untold number of voters were unable to cast a vote at all across precincts in Adams (Quincy) and other counties around the State on Tuesday, thanks to local election officials underestimating the number of paper ballots that would be needed, despite huge voter turnout elsewhere around the country during this Presidential Primary season so far.

“People couldn’t vote because of, essentially, a government failure,” IL State’s Attorney Jon Barnard charges. “They have the right to vote. It needs to be restored. It needs to be protected.”

He explained how he came up with the idea for this extraordinary remedy after an estimated 3,400 voters were turned away on Tuesday, and why he believes it’s so important. “Yes, it is unprecedented, at least to my knowledge, that someone has sought this remedy,” he says. “But you know what, in a situation like this, we’ve got to do something. And there’s got to be a first time. It might as well be here, it might as well be now. This is an emergency. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we ask people to die to protect this right. I don’t think it’s going too far or doing too much that we have instituted an emergency measure with sufficient safeguards to restore that right to people who have been denied that right. When we ask people, quite literally, to dive on grenades so that we can have this right, I’m going to do everything I think we ought to do to protect that right. And if this is the first time, then so be it.”

The County’s long-time Republican Prosecutor describes the safeguards that will be implemented, including an affidavit that voters must sign under penalty of perjury, attesting that they had attempted but were unable to vote on Tuesday, due to the shortages, which he believes are “more than sufficient to minimize the opportunity for mischief in the process.” He also explains why he “didn’t buy” the argument raised in court that allowing voters to vote, after preliminary results have already been announced, would be unfair.

UPDATE
A Federal Appeals court has denied an attempt by Adams County’s State’s Attorney Jon Barnard to allow voters who were unable to vote in the March 15 Primary due to long lines or no ballots, to cast their vote this week.

CLICK HERE to read the seven page (PDF) court order.