Lake County Gazette

Ela Township Trustee and Illinois House candidate Chris Bos (R-Lake Zurich) says he saw the Secretary of State’s program that mistakenly registered hundreds of non-citizens to vote for what it was – a catastrophe waiting to happen.

“When he was running for Secretary of State, Jason Helland brought this up as an issue and no one did anything about it,” Bos, running against state Rep. Mary Edly-Allen (D-Libertyville) in the 51st District, told the Lake County Gazette. “It just further goes to the incompetence and lack of real understanding that [current state leaders] have about being there to serve the public.”

According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, as many as 574 non-citizens are known to have registered through the Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) program, where the Secretary of State’s office automatically registers citizense to vote when they apply for a new Illinois driver’s license or a state ID. Of that group, officials confirm that at least 19 non-citizens actually cast votes in 2018.

Ela Township Trustee and Illinois House candidate Chris Bos (R-Lake Zurich)

“It’s a travesty and an issue that needs to be dealt with,” Bos said.

While Bos concedes that he has not seen any evidence yet of something sinister being at play, he stresses that the combination of a lack of oversight and little sense of urgency can be just as harmful as unscrupulous motives.

“You’re always hearing people talk about things like ‘vote early and vote often,’” Bos said.  “And then, there are all the jokes about how the ability to vote in Illinois is not a sacred thing. There’s just a lot to deal with.”

To which Bos argues there is only one solution.

“We need to fix the problem and find a way to clean up the voter fraud,” he said. “A part of that is reached by no longer registering people at the DMV. We need to be making sure that only people who should be voting are actually getting the chance to vote.”