SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WICS/WRSP) — Thousands of 16-year-olds started the automatic voter registration process.
Earlier this month, state election officials said a glitch with the state’s automatic voter registration system led to nearly 600 non-U.S. citizens being registered to vote in Illinois.
It seems there are more issues than just that glitch.
Illinois State Board of Elections says the Secretary of State’s Office forwarded on the information of 4,700 Illinois residents who weren’t old enough to vote.
Luckily, because the information included their date of birth, a filter alerted the Board of Elections to the error and they were able to shut down the voter registration process.
The information of the 4,700 16-year-olds was never sent to local election authorities to complete the registration process.
A letter was sent to those teens, letting them know they would not be registered to vote at that time.
The spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Elections says it’s unfortunate that this was their first experience with the voting process.
“The problem is, this is their first interaction with the voting process and now it’s been a negative interaction,” said Matt Dietrich, public information officer for the Illinois State Board of Elections.
When people go to get their driver’s license, they’re asked if they’d like to register to vote. After that they must answer two questions:
- Are you a U.S. Citizen?
- Are you 18 or will you be 18 on the date of the next election?
If they answered ‘no’ to either, then the automatic voter registration process would have shut down. That didn’t happen.
Instead, the information of some people who checked the ‘no’ box was sent on to the Board of Elections.
The Board of Elections is now telling the Secretary of State’s Office to not even ask 16-year-olds if they want to register to vote.
Some Illinois lawmakers are now calling for the Automatic Voter Registration Program to be shut down.
Thursday, ILGOP Chairman Schneider released the following statement renewing his call to suspend AVR:
“Shut it down. Shut it down now until we know the entire scope of the Secretary of State’s failures in implementing the AVR program. The fundamental right to vote and the sanctity of our democracy is too important to bury our heads in the sand and trust that Illinois’ state government has everything under control when it clearly does not. We must suspend the AVR program until a full investigation and audit has been performed and measures have been put into place to make sure this never happens again.”
When asked about the calls to shut down the AVR program, the spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Elections told us, “There’s no need for that… not only that, the automatic voter registration is now in state statute as of July 2, 2018. It’s the law. We do not have the authority… the governor doesn’t have the authority to suspend state law nor is there any reason to do so. These issues have been fixed and addressed.”
