Election Integrity

Election Integrity

The reputation of Illinois regarding elections and voting is not favorable. The (in)famous quip that the dead vote in Chicago is known nation-wide. In St. Clair county, the perception that our voting infrastructure and elections are just as corrupt as Chicago's is not uncommon. We must do better to let voters know their vote does matter.

While the County Clerk is the overseer of elections in the county, the county board can create ordinances to direct the actions of the Clerk. As a citizen, I would like voter registrations to be validated and scrubbed annually; that vote-by-mail ballots are counted prior to the final election day to ensure that they cannot be a source of "surprise" votes; and to have East St. Louis votes counted and certified before the rest of the county. As a board member, I will see what authority the county has to enact these measures and what is required by Illinois law.

Elections are the first step of Civic Engagement, where voters select who they want to represent them within the government. Confidence in the actions of government grows out of confidence that the government is acting in response to the peoples' will and within the bounds of the Constitution. It follows that unilateral executive orders are an affront to this conception of representative government and should be resisted and rejected at the ballot box.

Edit 2022-08-03: fixed spelling errors.