North Cook News

Illinois' Sixth Congressional District candidate Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) sees an opportunity for growth amid all the confusion stemming from the recent misstep by the Secretary of State’s Automatic Voting Registration (AVR) program that led to nearly 600 non-citizens mistakenly being registered to vote.

“I think that the voter rolls need to scrubbed thoroughly for voters who are ineligible to vote any more due to residency, citizenship, death or otherwise,” Ives told the DuPage Policy Journal. “Then, the Secretary of State and local elected officials need to continuously check and improve those systems to ensure only authorized citizens are allowed to vote.”

Like a growing number of GOP lawmakers, Ives, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Sean Casten (D-Downers Grove) in November, is now calling for a full investigation into how at least 574 non-citizens were wrongly allowed to register through the AVR program, 19 of whom the Illinois Board of Elections confirms voted in 2018 elections. The AVR program works by registering citizens who receive an Illinois driver’s license or state ID card, a system that Ives questions.

“My concern is that we don’t have people registering folks to vote who know all the rules and are assuring that only citizens are signed up to vote,” Ives said. “Anytime any non-citizen is allowed to vote, it diminishes the vote of every single citizen.”

As for those who may have knowingly voted without being eligible, Ives argues there should be consequences.

“People who knowingly voted illegally and are in the country illegally need to be deported, plain and simple,” she said. “With citizenship comes responsibility and privilege, and one of those perks is to participate in an election of those who are going to make laws over us. It needs to be treated like the sacred process it is.”