Prairie State Wire

Former Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden said Democrats in Illinois stopped provisions in a bill that would have made it easier to strike the dead from voter rolls. 

Shelden testified in favor of the original version of the bill which would have granted county clerks the ability to strike the dead from voter rolls based on obituaries. 

“When you go into the history of the Democratic Party, they have resisted pretty much all efforts to get voter registration rolls cleaned up,” Shelden told Prairie State Wire. “And it's pretty ridiculous because we've had 20 years - nearly 20 years - of provisional voting in place where if there's a mistake, somebody makes a mistake and inadvertently removes somebody that should not have been removed, that person is able to vote provisionally on their ballots to count and that certainly has happened.” 

The issue has come more into focus in the wake of voter irregularities that may have otherwise gone unreported if it were not for a close presidential race and a close congressional race. 

House Rep. Deanne Mazzochi (R-Elmhurst) renewed a push to get deceased voters off voter rolls last month. The bill, HB 2513, would require county clerks to take those who have died off the voter rolls, but her bill was ignored by House Democrats. 

Mazzochi believes that House Democrats used the pandemic as an excuse to lower the standards for absentee voting and then ignored many calls by House Republicans that would preserve the integrity of the election earlier this month.

This isn’t the first time House Democrats have ignored calls to preserve election integrity. House Rep. Grant Wehrli (R-Naperville) noticed during the initial vetting of SB 1863, Dems dismissed Republican concerns over integrity.

Shelden, the Champaign County recorder of deeds, said Democrats have resisted many efforts by Republicans to clean up voter rolls.

Shelden said they tried about 12 years ago to have the General Assembly allow them to remove people from voter rolls based on obituaries, but Democrats fought back against doing that.

“So, we have lots of people where we knew that they should have been removed for dying and they weren't,” Shelden said. “And of course, I read some government agency actually talking about these systems and their level of confidence was overstated, I believe dramatically. There are lots of jurisdictions that do not do a good job of removing those voters. And so the idea that the system works perfectly, it ... just doesn't.”

Shelden said Democrats chose to keep archaic language for the permanently disabled in their bill and remove the language regarding obituaries.

“They gave all sorts of excuses as to why they couldn't do it or should do it,” Shelden said. “And of course, election officials across the state were unified in saying this was reasonable and made sense.”