Illinois treasurer race still too close to call

The winner of the race for Illinois treasurer may not be known for weeks, as the vote count remains too close to call and the two candidates differ on the number of votes still out and who might benefit from them.

When The Associated Press ended its vote tabulation early Wednesday evening, Republican Tom Cross held a 21,000 vote lead over Democrat Mike Frerichs out of more than 3.4 million votes cast. But both campaigns acknowledged that absentee ballots are still coming into local election jurisdictions and authorities have yet to review provisional ballots.

County clerks and election authorities have until Nov. 18 to finish counting all ballots and until Nov. 25 to report those results to the State Board of Elections. The board is tentatively planning to meet Nov. 30 to certify the results.

"Election authorities are still counting tens of thousands of ballots mailed in by voters across the state," said Dave Clarkin, spokesman for Frerichs, a state senator from Champaign. "Those votes should be counted. The race is extremely close right now. It could go either way and the campaign is waiting for all the votes to be counted."

Kevin Artl, spokesman for Cross, said the lead held by state representative from Oswego remains at about 21,000. However, Clarkin said late Thursday the number has shrunk to about 13,200.

At this point, it's a waiting game.

"We're reaching out to our donors and supporters, letting them know what's going on," Artl said. "We are preparing - in the event we have to defend our victor - preparing a top-notch legal team to work on the recount."

The state election board's executive director, Rupert Borgsmiller, said voters requested 346,200 absentee ballots statewide, of which 94,000 have not been returned. Borgsmiller cautioned that those ballots might not be returned.

He said local authorities had until the end of Thursday to report the number of provisional ballots cast statewide.

In Chicago, there were about 13,000 provisional ballots cast, said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners. Courtney Greve of Cook County Clerk David Orr's office said there are 8,000 provisional ballots in suburban Cook County, with thousand absentee ballots still uncounted in each jurisdiction.

Artl contended Frerichs is not winning enough of the outstanding votes to make a difference. Clarkin said results are up in the air until "tens of thousands" of votes are tallied.