County Clerks in Illinois vary markedly in how they report write-in votes.
No more “Mickey Mouse” (although I was always a fan of Donald Duck).
Of course, there’s no more Mike Royko to write about such dissing of the Establishment,
One has to register one’s attempt to run a write-in campaign.
The Winnebago County Clerk explains the process:
When no one stepped forward to run for State Treasurer, Max Solomon, who tried to get on the GOP primary ballot to run for Governor, but fell short, decided to try to fill the vacancy.
To obtain ballot access, a statewide candidate needs 5,000 write-in votes.
Kane County Clerk John Cunningham was the most transparent.
He has posted the number of Solomon write-ins–1,038
The split between legitimate and illegitimate votes is about 50-50.
Lake County reported 1.312 votes for Solomon as of Election Day.
DuPage County found 3.023 write-in votes for Solomon.
Winnebago published these results showing 673 write-in votes.
If we use the 50% breakdown from Kane County, Winnebago would add 336 votes to Solomon’s total.
Again, assuming 50% of the write-ins for State Treasurer went of Solomon in Will County, he may well have gotten the 5,000 required write-ins there, because there were 10,062 write-ins cast in the State Treasurer’s race.
Lake County reported only 1,312 write-ins for State Treasurer, certainly showing only a teeny-tiny effort was made by the local Republican Party.
In McHenry County, County Clerk Joe Tirio only reported the total number of write-ins for State Treasurer.
Again, using McHenry County would add 1,000 more.
Sangamon County (Springfield) used to have a vibrant Republican Party, so I took a look at its figures.
County Clerk Don Grey provided no information at all.
Madison County (near St. Louis) provided about the same information as McHenry.
So, maybe there will be another 950 votes found there for Solomon.
McLean County follows the same format as McHenry.
Guess there might be another 400 write-in votes in the Normal area.
Illogically, Bloomington has it own little fretum–a city election commission. It reported no write-in votes for State Treasurer.
The reason?
Solomon didn’t file the required notice.
There are no results reported by the Rockford Election Commission either.
I’m guessing Solomon thought the conduct of elections is logical in Illinois and didn’t know about election commissions.
Solomon did not register with the Chicago Board of Elections as a write-in candidate, but a spokesman said the “adjudication process” has not yet occurred.
He said the 167 vote total shown above could have been from absentee ballots.
