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March 28, 2024 - Epoch Times
09:41
9,000 Mail-In Ballots Suddenly “Found” in Illinois Election
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Three days ago, an official within the Chicago Election Board came out and he announced that, somehow, roughly 9,000 mail-in ballots were mistakenly not counted in the state election that was held last week.
Or, to put it another way from the other perspective, this election official came out and he said that approximately 9,000 previously uncounted mail-in ballots were suddenly discovered sitting in a cage somewhere in Chicago.
Specifically.
The election official in question here is Mr. Max Bever.
He is the Director of Public Information over at the Chicago Board of Elections.
And here is part of the public statement that he released just last week.
Quote, In adding up the total number of vote-by-mail ballots that the board had received back so far, I mistakenly left out additional ballots that came in by mail on the evening of March 18th, a day prior to Election Day.
I traded speed for accuracy in reporting out numbers this week as quickly as I could.
I truly regret this error on my part and for the confusion that it has caused the voters of Chicago.
I will share updated numbers, only when they are accurate and verified.
Now, let me give you a bit of background on this particular case, because the details here are rather strange, to say the least.
And also, I hope that if you appreciate content like this, which is oftentimes completely ignored by the mainstream legacy news outlets, well, I do hope you take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that the YouTube algorithm will be quite literally forced to share this information out to ever more people.
Now, the election in question here is the Cook County race for state attorney.
For your reference, the Cook County State Attorney's Office is the second largest in the country, right behind Los Angeles.
And for the past eight years, the position of Cook County State Attorney has been held by Ms.
Kimberly Fox.
And even if you happen to not live in Chicago, well, you might have heard about some of the creative policies that Ms.
Fox implemented.
Quote, Once she took command, Fox announced that she would not allow her prosecutors to prosecute certain crimes, including certain theft and drug offenses.
They weren't allowed to seek bail for most offenders, and they were prohibited from seeking appropriate sentences even for repeat violent offenders.
In the six years before she was elected as Cook County's state attorney, Chicago experienced an average of 455 homicides per year from the years 2010 to 2015.
That was still a high number, but in 2016, the year that Fox was elected, homicides spiked to 778 and, through 2021, have averaged 680 per year.
and through 2021 have averaged 680 per year.
In 2021 alone, there were 797 homicides.
Fox also effectively declared open season on retail stores by raising the bar from prosecuting felony shoplifting to $1,000 per incident, despite the Illinois legislature's determination that a lower amount should suffice for a felony.
Meaning that during her tenure in office, she directed her prosecutors to not pursue certain types of charges.
She effectively eliminated cash bail, allowing criminals to walk free just hours after getting arrested, and she raised the threshold for felony retail theft to $1,000, leading to a wave of shoplifting because criminals knew that as long as they kept it in the range of $700 to $900 per incident, well, they would be just fine.
And also, just as a fun fact, it was Ms.
Kimberly Fox who decided to drop the charges against Mr. Jussie Smollett, despite all the evidence against them.
And so, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, after serving two terms in office, Ms.
Kimberly Fox decided to not run for a third term, leaving the position of state attorney open to challengers.
However, Cook County is a Democrat stronghold, and so the real race is the Democrat primary, because whoever wins the Democrat primary will have essentially won the actual general election.
And so, along that line, you had two candidates who were vying for the Democrat nomination.
You had Ms.
Eileen Burke, as well as Mr. Clayton Harris III.
And the differences between these two candidates was rather stark.
For instance, Ms.
Eileen Burke, who was a former judge at an appellate court, she was widely regarded in the area as a tough-on-crime candidate.
For instance, during an interview with the Associated Press, Ms.
Ms. Burke said the following, quote, "We should be booming.
We're not because of crime.
This is something we can fix.
Kim Fox's decision to not charge thefts below $1,000 as felonies doesn't deter crime.
It promotes it." On the flip side, however, you have Mr. Clayton Harris, who vowed to keep in place the curtain policies if he were to be elected.
And he also added that criminal punishments should be made with consideration to racial disparities.
Here's what he said during an interview: "If someone came and took my cell phone, is that cell phone worth a felony on your record?
I do not think so.
We look at recidivism.
We charge everyone appropriately." And so, this is all to say that even though this race was technically just a primary election for state attorney, it was actually a very consequential race.
Because for one, whoever won this primary is pretty much guaranteed to win the general election.
And then secondly, the difference in ideologies between these two particular candidates will almost certainly affect the actual quality of life as well as the crime rates in the city of Chicago.
And so, the stakes are obviously high.
And also, the margins between these two candidates were razor thin.
And so with that as the general background, you can imagine the dismay of the people who live in Cook County when, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, the election board suddenly came out and they released a statement saying that they found roughly 9,000 to 10,000 missing ballots.
The Chicago Board of Elections says that it made a mistake when tabulating the results for the Democrat primary race for Cook County's state attorney.
The race to lead the nation's second-largest prosecutor's office could not be tighter, with just 2,000 votes separating the candidates after a heated primary campaign.
The election board is now looking to add an additional 10,000 votes to the total counts after some vote-by-mail ballots were mistakenly left out.
Now, in terms of how specifically this alleged mistake occurred, Mr. Max Bever, who Who is again that same election official who initially informed the public, he followed up his announcement with something of an explanation.
Here's part of what he wrote.
Quote, "I made an error in reporting the numbers of vote-by-mail ballots received back on Monday, March 18th, before Election Day, that should have been included in the received-by-Election Day numbers.
Previously, I reported that 66,399 vote-by-mail ballots were received back and scanned for signature verification by the end of Monday, March 18th.
I initially reported that 7,009 vote-by-mail ballots were received back via USPS on Election Day, which is March 19.
This number was incorrect.
I only reported on the vote-by-mail ballots received back on Election Day only.
Approximately 9,143 vote-by-mail additional ballots received back on Monday should have been included in this receive-by-Election-Day number that would be processed and counted after Election Day.
Meaning that somehow roughly 9,000 ballots were not included in the official tally.
He then went on to write that these ballots have allegedly just been sitting in a cage up until March 22nd, which is three days after Election Day.
Quote, "These vote-by-mail ballots received back on Monday, March 18th through Tuesday, March 19th, were secured in a receiving cage at 69 West Washington until they could be run through the Agilis scanning machine for purposes including verifying that those voters had not cast ballots during early voting or on election day and to prepare signature were secured in a receiving cage at 69 West Washington until they could These ballots were inspected, processed, and counted by election judges on Friday, March 22nd through Saturday, March 23rd." All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment.
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And here's where things, you can say, get interesting.
Because according to the preliminary results, the ones that were officially released by the city of Chicago, As of 6pm on Election Day, March 19th, Mr. Clayton Harris III was leading the race by about 13,000 votes.
As you can see, the tally showed him at about 52%, while Ms.
Eileen Burke was at 47%.
However, you fast forward a few days, and after more ballots were counted, including these missing 9,000 ballots that were allegedly discovered sitting somewhere in a cage, well, the vote tally actually flipped.
As of this moment, even though the race has not officially been called yet, Ms.
Eileen Burke is now in the lead by about 1,600 votes.
That is, if nothing else, an amazing turnaround.
Going from having a 13,000 vote deficit to instead being 1,600 votes ahead, well, that's an achievement to say the least.
However, as I mentioned earlier, the race has not been called yet.
And actually, despite the election itself taking place officially on March 19th, the ballot counting period is going to last for about another week, up until April 2nd.
And so, the race is still technically up for grabs.
And who knows, there might be another cage somewhere in Chicago with even more ballots that have yet to be counted.
If you'd like to go deeper into this particular story, I'll throw the links to all my research notes.
You can find them down in the description box below this video if you're the type of person that likes to dig into the wheat.
And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epic Times.
Stay informed.
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