St. Clair County Democrat takes lead in circuit clerk’s race after mail-in ballots counted
After St. Clair County officials spent a second day counting ballots on Thursday, unofficial election results show that Democrat Kinnis Williams Sr. has overtaken Republican Cindi McDonald in the circuit clerk’s race.
Williams now has a 270-vote lead over McDonald, who had a lead of 354 votes on election night on Nov. 8 and an 18-vote lead after ballots were counted on Wednesday.
Williams has 43,491 votes, or 50.15%, and McDonald has 43,221 votes, or 49.84%, according to a combination of St. Clair County results released Thursday evening, and East St. Louis Board of Elections results released last week.
A bipartisan group of election judges from the Democratic and Republican parties spent Wednesday and Thursday processing ballots, which included mail-in ballots received since Nov. 8 and ballots that were challenged. The judges were asked to review signatures for the voters, but they were not allowed to see how the person voted.
East St. Louis will process ballots on Tuesday, which is the last day for mail-in ballots to be counted.
St. Clair County also will be counting ballots next week.
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 on Wednesday morning that the election judges were asked to review over 2,000 ballots on Wednesday and Thursday.
Holbrook also said he will receive final results from the East St. Louis Board of Elections later this month and those combined results will be sent to the state.
Kandrise Mosby, executive director of the East St. Louis Board of Elections, said her department will be processing late-arriving ballots next Tuesday. As of Wednesday, the department had about 85 ballots on hand that need to be reviewed.
The circuit clerk race is for a two-year unexpired term because former St. Clair County Circuit Clerk Kahalah A. Clay resigned last year to take a job as the chief legal counsel for the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Marie Zaiz has been serving as interim circuit clerk in the meantime.
The vote counting in St. Clair County this week also flipped the results in the St. Clair County Board District 2 race.
G.W. Scott Jr., the Democratic candidate, had a nine-vote lead on Thursday after he had been trailing Cary Mathews, the Republican candidate, by nine votes on election night. As of Thursday afternoon, Scott had 1,849 votes and Mathews had 1,840.
This story was originally published November 17, 2022 at 6:07 PM.
