Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White has reached an agreement with a coalition of advocacy organizations to settle a lawsuit that alleged his office violated federal and state laws by botching the rollout of automatic voter registration.
The lawsuit, filed in February 2020 in federal court in Chicago, came after a series of problems with the system came to light last year, including a mix-up that resulted in at least one non-U. S. citizen voting in a 2018 election.
The groups that filed the lawsuit already had been critical of the state for the slow implementation of automatic voter registration, which is supposed to seamlessly add citizens to the voter rolls when they get a driver’s license or state identification card, since it became law in 2017.
Wristbands are ready for voters just after polls opened for city elections in Chicago at Augustana Lutheran Church in the 5500 block of South Woodlawn Avenue on April 2, 2019. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune / Chicago Tribune)
They alleged in their lawsuit that the secretary of state’s office and the State Board of Elections — which was later dismissed as a defendant — had ignored critiques and offers of assistance.
The settlement, reached last week, will address several problems identified in the system, including the lack of adequate access for people with limited English skills and the failure to automatically update the rolls when voters move. It will also stop registration information for people who aren’t eligible to vote because of age or citizenship status from being automatically sent to the elections board, the organizations said.
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Under the agreement, voter registration information will be available in additional languages at driver services facilities in areas with large numbers of people who speak languages other than English, as required by the federal Voting Rights Act. In Cook County, for example, that means instructions will be made available in Spanish, Chinese, Hindi and Urdu.
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The secretary of state’s office also agreed to no longer send the elections board registration information to people who are not U.S. citizens or who will not be old enough to vote in the next election.
White’s office also agreed to implement a system within nine months that will allow residents to automatically update their voter registration when they submit an address change for their driver’s licenses or ID cards.
“These may seem like technical fixes, but they add up to countless eligible voters who will now be able to register and cast their ballots in Illinois — if implemented correctly,” said Abe Scarr, director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
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The other organizations involved in the lawsuit were the Chicago branch of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, CHANGE Illinois, Chicago Votes Education Fund, Common Cause Illinois and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Automatic voter registration was approved without opposition in the General Assembly and signed into law in 2017 by then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Early last year, the program came under scrutiny for a mix-up that resulted in 545 people who indicated they weren’t U.S. citizens being registered to vote. Of those, 16 voted in elections in November 2018 and spring 2019, the State Board of Elections has said. However, nine of them were legally registered and had voted before automatic voter registration was implemented in July 2018.
The one noncitizen who voted cast a ballot in the November 2018 general election in Champaign County.
Last year, White’s office said the issue was the result of a programming error that had since been corrected.
The secretary of state’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the settlement.
dpetrella@chicagotribune.com
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