Mail-in ballots still being counted in razor-tight primary race for Cook County State’s Attorney
CHICAGO — The razor-tight Democratic primary race for Cook County’s top prosecutor is coming down to ballots counted in a basement.
Chicago election judges and representatives from both Democratic campaigns for Cook County State’s Attorney have descended on the lower level of 69 West Washington Street this weekend, counting what remains of mail-in ballots in the race between Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III.
The Chicago Board of Elections says the amount of mail-in ballots that need to be counted is enough to matter in the close race. The Board of Elections also said an additional 10,659 mail-in ballots left out of the initial count have been added in this weekend and will now be counted.
O’Neill Burke has maintained her slim lead over Harris, but the lead had been cut to less than 4,800 votes.
“When races are close and there’s a lot of vote-by-mail ballots that are coming back, that’s often why campaigns want to wait to see what happens (and) have every vote counted,” said Max Bever, Director of Public Information for the Board of Elections.
The winner of the primary in the Democratic stronghold is expected to win outright in November against Republican candidate Bob Fioretti. Also running is Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski.
Election judges and poll watchers will be downtown again Sunday tabulating the final mail-in votes.
“Overall, we had over 176,000 vote-by-mail ballots that went out,” Bever said. “As of (Friday) night, we had over 27,000 that were returned back from election day.”
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Processing vote by mail ballots isn’t a straightforward, streamlined process, either. There’s multiple steps involved before a vote-by-mail ballot can be counted.
“They have to open up the ballots. They have to inspect them for damage,” Bever said. “They have to initial them, like you see a judge initial your ballot on Election Day before it goes into the scanner.
“It’s organized by ward, but then that’s pretty much when the quick process starts to happen.”
The Board of Elections says it expects that most of the remaining ballots will be counted by Sunday night, with some still left to be done Monday.
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