Vote counting resumes in St. Clair County, where two races are still too close to call
A bipartisan group of election judges in St. Clair County went back to work on Wednesday morning to review more than 2,000 ballots that were not processed on Election Day on Nov. 8.
The election judges include members of the Democratic and Republican parties. They also are scheduled to work on Thursday.
After the ballots processed Wednesday were counted, the county updated its website with unofficial results on Wednesday afternoon. The site also will be updated at about 5 p.m. Thursday. Officials are allowed to receive and process ballots until Nov. 22, or two weeks after the election.
There are two closely watched St. Clair County races that had narrow margins as of election night.
In the race for circuit clerk, Cindi McDonald, the Republican candidate, saw her election night lead over Kinnis Williams Sr., the Democratic candidate, drop from 354 votes to 18 after the county updated unofficial election results on Wednesday.
McDonald has 42,769 votes, or 50.01%, and Williams has 42,751, or 49.98%, which includes a combination of the county’s results updated on Wednesday and the results from East St. Louis on election night.
East St. Louis will update its results next week. As of Wednesday afternoon, the East St. Louis election officials had received about 80 to 85 ballots to process.
And in the St. Clair County Board District 2 race, G.W. Scott Jr., the Democratic candidate, took an eight-vote lead on Wednesday after he had been trailing Cary Mathews, the Republican candidate, by nine votes on election night. As of Wednesday afternoon, Scott had 1,847 votes, or 50.1%, and Mathews had 1,839,or 49.89%.
All results are unofficial until certified by election authorities. Local election officials have until Nov. 29 to send their final election results to the Illinois State Board of Elections, which is scheduled to certify the official results on Dec. 5.
St. Clair County Clerk Tom Holbrook said he will later receive final results from the East St. Louis Board of Elections and those combined results will be sent to the state.
Review process
The election judges are reviewing voter signatures to see if they match the one on file, but they are not allowed to see how a person voted.
The ballots being reviewed include mail-in ballots received by the clerk’s office since Nov. 8. Mail-in ballots can be received until Nov. 22. Also, provisional ballots, which are ones that were questioned at a polling place, will be processed next week.
“They’re still coming in,” Holbrook said of the mail-in ballots. “It’s just a trickle now rather than a large amount.”
The election judges are also reviewing challenged ballots.
“It means the judges found something that they thought did not meet the qualifications for that ballot to be cast,” Holbrook said. “Those people receive a letter from us saying they’ve been challenged and why. They have an opportunity to respond to it.”
The East St. Louis Board of Elections goes through the same review procedure.
Kandrise Mosby, executive director of the East St. Louis Board of Elections, said her department will be processing late-arriving ballots on Nov. 22.
This story was originally published November 16, 2022 at 1:13 PM.
