COOK COUNTY — Eileen O’Neill Burke is clinging to a narrow lead in the Democratic primary for Cook County state’s attorney, as Clayton Harris III continued to gain ground Monday — though still not enough to catch his opponent.
O’Neill Burke holds 50.16 percent of the vote to 49.84 percent for Harris, as of 4:45 p.m. Monday. O’Neill Burke leads Harris by just 1,643 votes.
O’Neill Burke holds 261,885 votes to 260,242 votes for Harris in the unofficial results for the March 19 primary. That includes votes from Chicago and suburban Cook County.
Around 5,200 mail ballots were added to the race’s count on Monday from Chicago and the suburbs. That comes as the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners tallied 23,766 additional vote by mail ballots Saturday and Sunday, spokesperson Max Bever said.
The Board of Elections on Monday did not immediately update how many vote by mail ballots remain outstanding.
As the state’s attorney primary remains neck and neck, neither campaign declared victory or conceded on Monday. O’Neill Burke jumped out to an early lead after polls closed Tuesday night that has since shrunk after a majority of mail ballots were tallied for Harris.
Monday’s vote update follows a hectic and confusing weekend in which elections board staff acknowledged a series of errors in the past week in correctly reporting the number of mail and provisional ballots to the public.
On Sunday, Bever said he had initially reported that the elections board received about 7,000 mail ballots on March 19 — Election Day. But about 9,143 more ballots that arrived late on March 18 should have been included in that number, Bever said.
Those additional ballots were secured at the election board’s Downtown headquarters and received by elections officials March 18-19, Bever said. They have already been processed and counted, Bever said.
“These vote by mail ballots … were secured in a receiving cage at 69 W. Washington until they could be run through the Agilis scanning machine for purposes including verifying that those voters had not cast ballots during Early Voting or on Election Day, and to prepare signature specimens for verification,” Bever said in a statement. “These ballots were inspected, processed and counted by election judges on Friday, March 22, through Saturday, March 23, and are already reflected in the unofficial results.”
The mistake stoked widespread social media confusion and vitriol that included a now-deleted tweet from Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) insinuating there may have been foul play or voter fraud in the counting process.
Hopkins later posted a corrected version of the tweet.
Then on Monday, Bever acknowledged that another elections staffer had also incorrectly reported the total number of provisional ballots cast on Election Day.
A provisional ballot is cast when someone votes in the wrong precinct, is challenged by an elections judge, or for numerous other reasons. After Election Day, provisional ballots are evaluated to determine if they can be included in the final vote tallies or are rejected.
The current number of provisional ballots — some of which may not end up being counted – stands at 1,991 as of Monday afternoon. Those ballots will “be reviewed for acceptance, rejection, or partial count by April 2,” the elections board said on social media Monday.
The winner of primary will face Republican Bob Fioretti and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski in the November general election to become the county’s top prosecutor. The winner will replace outgoing State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
You can read more about each Democratic candidate here.
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