Longtime Kane County Clerk Cunningham moves on to November election

Longtime Kane County Clerk John "Jack" Cunningham appeared to have clinched the Republican primary Tuesday and will face Democrat Nicolas "Nico" Jimenez in November.

With all precincts reporting, unofficial vote totals showed Cunningham with 16,877 votes and his opponent, Doug Warlick, with 11,445 votes.

Cunningham, who has been the clerk since 2002, said there was more work to do in his office, and he wanted to see some projects through to completion. The five-term incumbent said he would like to open a satellite office - similar to one in Aurora - in Elgin and finish work to replace voting equipment.

During the campaign, Cunningham also pointed to ways his office has worked to make elections more secure. He said cameras were installed in the vote by mail processing room and thousands of vote by mail ballots were scanned for public review.

Warlick challenged Cunningham and advocated for term limits to allow for the continual flow of fresh ideas in the office.

He vowed to serve no more than two terms if elected. Warlick also criticized how Cunningham ran the 2020 election, including the use of a machine to check mail-in ballots for missing or invalid signatures. Cunningham argued it would have taken more than 20,000 man-hours to process mail-in ballots by hand.