Prairie State Wire

Permanent vote-by-mail as passed by Illinois in 2021 is open to fraud according to political commentator John Lott. 

In comments to Prairie State Wire Lott said the history of election fraud in the United States is deep. He said the permanent vote by mail system passed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and in action for the November election cycle has been avoided in other areas of the world due to the potential for fraud. On June 17, 2021, the governor authorized Public Act 102-0015. It enables voters to enroll in a long-term vote-by-mail program and get a ballot by mail for all upcoming elections by submitting a single application. 

“I think it will create potentials for fraud and for vote buying,” Lott told Prairie State Wire. But there is a reason why all the other countries in the world or most of them ban absentee ballots, let alone types of mail-in ballots. You look at Europe, for example, as the 47 countries in Europe, 35 of the 47 countries banned absentee ballots for people living in the country. And the reason why they do and then there is another 10 that allow absentee ballots, but they limit it to – they will not send it in the mail. You have to go in person to pick up the absentee ballot and you have to show a government-issued photo ID to be able to pick it up. So that's 45 of the 47 countries in Europe have that. And the reason why even the ten will not send it to you in the mail is that they're worried that the ballots will get stolen even for absentee, where you're having to ask for rather than mail in where it's just sending it out to people.” 

Lott also cited situations of opportunities for vote buying.

"You may have ballots being sent to the wrong addresses," he said. "So there are lots of different types of issues that are there. You know, there's plenty of stories that you have where people who are living in apartments will go and see, you know, get ballots for people who have been living in the apartment before them. Or you'll go through the mail rooms and find lots of ballots on the floor and things like that. So one of the big problems with absentee ballots in general, let alone mail-in ballots, is the possibility of vote buying. Most people don't know the history of voting in the United States.”

According to Lott secret ballots were implemented in some states because of vote buying. 

“We didn't have secret ballots up until relatively recently," he said. "The first state to have secret ballots was Kentucky in 1892. The last state to have secret ballots was South Carolina in 1950. And the main reason why we moved to secret ballots was because [of] vote buying. What used to happen is you have a ballot box up in the front of the room and you drop in colored pieces of paper, and the political parties for either party would stand on either side of the ballot box and watch what color paper you put in. And [the] pay was based on how you voted. the reason why we moved to secret ballots was so that you couldn't see how people were voting. And at that time, because of the concern about vote buying being so large. It was a really major problem, that most places banned absentee ballots or had very strict limits on them because of the fact that you could observe how somebody voted with an absentee ballot and then pay them based on that, and of course, you have issues about vote harvesting. [D]oes the new rule have any changes with regard to vote harvesting?”

Voter fraud has been particularly prevalent in Illinois historically. The Chicago Tribune reported that 37 Chicago residents were charged with tampering with votes in the 1972 election. Michael Madigan, a former speaker of the Illinois House who is under indictment for 22 counts of public corruption, was in office for two years, when the vote fraud indictment happened.

John F. Kennedy's victory in Cook County in 1960 was questioned and thought to be the result of vote tampering, according to Slate.

DuPage County observed a spike in the number of dead residents registering to vote ahead of the 2020 election. Only a few weeks before former President Donald Trump contested the presidential election results, NBC 5 Chicago referred to adding deceased voters to voter records as "a time-honored Chicago tradition.”