Treasurer's race could be tightest state race in history
In what could be the closest state race in Illinois election history, state treasurer Republican candidate Tom Cross is holding a 393-vote lead over Democrat Mike Frerichs in an election where 3.485 million votes were cast.
The race was still too close to call Monday, as tens of thousands of provisional, absentee, and mail-in votes from around the state have yet to be counted. County election officials have a Nov. 18 deadline to report their votes.
The race between state Rep. Cross, of Oswego, and Democratic state Sen. Frerichs, of Champaign, is believed to be one of the tightest statewide races ever. The difference is one one-thousandth of 1 percentage point, or a 0.001-point difference.
"You can't get much closer," said Illinois State Board of Elections General Counsel Ken Menzel. "People still talk about Thompson-Stevenson (the governor's race in 1982), and that was about 5,000 votes (difference)."
Roughly 8,000 provisional ballots have yet to be counted in Cook County alone, a spokeswoman for Cook County Clerk David Orr said Monday. That's helping the Frerichs campaign feel hopeful.
"We feel positive. We've always felt positive," Frerichs campaign spokesman Dave Clarkin said Monday. "The results have been seesawing back and forth, but they've been seesawing in our direction."
Libertarian treasurer candidate Matthew Skopek had roughly 140,000 votes.
Cross said Monday that hundreds of Cook County voters cast multiple ballots in the Nov. 4 election. Cook County Clerk David Orr called the accusations "unfounded" and "irresponsible." Orr said people from Cross' campaign watched them count every vote, at every step.
"Perhaps the Cross campaign is confused by the provisional ballot verification process, during which we check one-by-one if an in-precinct voter cast a ballot by mail or during early voting. While we research provisional voters, their ballots have yet to be counted," Orr said in a statement.
However, Cross' campaign manager Kevin Artl said over the weekend, Cross' campaign staff members matched up 8,000 provisional ballots with absentee ballots and found hundreds of Cook County voters voted multiple times.
"Our fear is that the safeguards in place to ensure one person-one vote will not be adequately enforced and this number may go from the hundreds to the thousands as our review continues," Cross' campaign said in a statement.