Your Vote Matters – Protect Your Right to Vote – Check Your Voter Registration Status
Check the status of your voter registration prior to the election. If you have not voted in a while your voter status may have changed from active to inactive or you may have been removed from the rolls. So, checking your status is important.
You can contact your local election authority in these Northern Illinois counties and the city of Chicago.
Ways to Register – In Person or Online
You should contact your election authority if your voter registration:
- is not up to date,
- if you have moved
- if changed your name
- or if you are a first-time voter
In-Person Registration is available at the Election Authority or their designated locations. This includes Grace Period Registration 27 days prior to the election. Other locations to register may include your city hall, schools, public library, or township offices depending on when you register.
Voter Registration Form from the Illinois State Board of Elections
Same Day Voter Registration at the poll during Early Voting and on Election Day is also available.
Please note that registering prior to the election is preferred as a consideration for other voters, since line backups can be created if many people are registering and voting.
Online Registrations must be received 16 days before Election Day. If this deadline is missed, voters can register at the Election Authority or during Early Voting or on Election Day.
Mailed Voter Registrations must be postmarked 28 days before the election.
For more information, please visit the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Problems with Computerized Voting Machines Need to Be Addressed
Since their introduction computerized voting machines have been plagued with problems. From machine malfunctions to election systems that have been breached voters may question the veracity of the vote. Is it a true reflection of the votes cast?
In numerous elections these problems have included – serious lack of security for the machines, the network of voter rolls, and the tabulators. [links below: 1, 2, 3, 4]
Machines have been hacked. [links below: 3, 5]
They have been proven unreliable. [links below: 5, 6, 7, 8] And they have also been inaccurate, with hand counts overturning elections run on voting machines. [links below: 9, 10, 11, 12]
The software that runs election machines is proprietary and secret.
How can the voter be sure that the computer, and its secret software is tallying their vote as the voter intended?
Or is free from internal or external manipulation?
References
- How the Russians Penetrated Illinois Election Computers
- The Myth of the Hack Proof Voting Machine
- Voting Machine Hacked–video (Hacking Democracy Video)
- Black Box Voting–Part 1 Machine Malfunction
- All Voting Machines Can Be Hacked
- Broken Machines Rejected Ballots and Long Lines
- Texas Voting Machines Have-Been A Known-Problem For A Decade
- Does the discrepancy between exit polls vote totals from the 2016 election show fraud
- Dekalb County Mail in Ballots Counted Twice in County Race
- Palm Beach Elections Overturned After Hand Count Reveals Op-Scan Mistallied Results
- Rockford area election glitch affected 20K Ballots
- Forensic Analysis Finds Venango County, PA, E-voting System ‘Remotely Accessed’ on ‘Multiple Occasions’ by Unknown Computer
Good News – There is a Solution! Illinois House of Representatives Bill HB 2555
Representative Suzanne Ness is the sponsor of the election audit bill HB 2555 a remedy to problems in the electoral process.
It would safeguard the electoral process and instill confidence that election outcomes have not been tampered with by doing the following:
- Verify that the Machine Tally is Correct—by requiring a random sample of 10% of the ballots cast.
- Audit the Chain of Custody—Before, During and After the Election—to secure all voting materials including vote by mail ballots, early voting ballots.
- It would also secure vote counting equipment and tabulators.
- Require a voter verified paper ballot for all voting including Early Voting and on Election Day
Illinois House of Representatives Bill HB 2555
The Act, if adopted, will amend the Illinois Election Code (10 ILCS 5/) and require that each election authority in Illinois:
(i) conduct an election day audit of a random sample of 10% of votes cast and
(ii) provide for the performance by one or more independent auditors of post-election parallel tabulations and audits; and it provides for the scope of the audits and the resulting reports.
It would also require that optical scan technology and direct recording electronic voting systems meet certain federal and independent testing standards.
With respect to early voting, the Act requires that an election authority using only direct recording electronic voting systems have paper ballots available for all voters wishing to use them for early voting, and election day.
The bill also provides for strengthening the pre-election Logic and Accuracy Testing (LAT) of electronic voting machines by requiring that these public tests be performed prior to the beginning of actual voting.
In addition, the bill’s provisions include a requirement that only human-readable voter-verifiable paper records produced by touch-screen voting devices be used in post-election counts and audits and prohibits the use of bar codes that voters can’t read.
HB 2555 has been initially assigned to the Rules Committee.
Please contact the Rules Committee Chair Rep. Robyn Gabel to pass HB 2555 out of the Rules Committee. Once the bill gets passed out of Rules, it can then be assigned to the Ethics and Elections to get a hearing.
You can also ask your state representative to add their name to support the bill.
If you do not know your Illinois State Representative, you can find them here:
Find My Illinois RepresentativeYou can then contact your IL State Rep here:
Contact Your Illinois Representative