Democrat Candidates Get 10,000 Missing Votes After 'Human Error'

Around 10,000 missing votes have been added to a Democratic primary tally after being overlooked in what election officials call a "human error."

The mistake, if unchecked, could have made all the difference in Chicago's Cook County state's attorney's race. The primary pits retired appellate court justice Eileen O'Neill Burke, widely seen as a Democratic moderate, against university lecturer Clayton Harris, seen as more progressive.

On March 19, polling day, Harris was nearly 10,000 votes behind, according to an early estimated tally. By the end of Wednesday, after the 10,000 votes were added in, unofficial results had narrowed down to a tiny margin. O'Neill Burke was ahead by just 1,598 votes, with 50.16 percent of the poll, against 49.84 percent for Harris.

The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners said on Sunday there were 54,191 outstanding mail-in ballots that had been sent out to voters yet to be returned. Officials don't expect to receive them all. The official result won't be known until the April 2 deadline.

Discovery of the 10,000 additional ballots sparked questions about election integrity on social media against the backdrop of Donald Trump's continued refusal to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election. The former president, and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, is continuing to claim the contest was rigged against him despite this allegation being repeatedly rejected by both courts and independent election experts.

On Saturday Max Bever, spokesperson for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, admitted in a statement published in the Chicago Sun-Times that around 10,000 votes received by mail on the Monday before the primary had been mistakenly left out of previous counts.

"I traded speed for accuracy in reporting out numbers this week as quickly as I could. I truly regret this error on my part and for the confusion that it has caused the voters of Chicago," he said.

"You're looking at a human error and he's standing in front of you," he added in a clip shown on NewsNation.

Newsweek contacted both the O'Neill Burke and Harris campaigns by email at 4:30 a.m. ET on Thursday. This article will be updated if either wishes to comment.

Bever added that both campaigns had been informed about the mistake and insisted the ballots initially excluded from the count had at all times remained secure.

Despite the admission of error, some social media users jumped to the conclusion that it was a sign of ballot rigging.

Commenting on his reposting of the missing 10,000 votes story, Chuck Soltys wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "showing just how the democrats control elections."

Another poster, called BASEDLAYER, said: "They wait til they figure out the number of votes they need and then they do the ballot dump. Just like the 2020 election."

Automatic ballot recounts aren't included in Illinois election law meaning one of the candidates would have to request one, and agree to pay for it, for this to happen should the result be contested.

"Given the evolving dynamics in this race since Election Day, it is important to wait and ensure every vote is counted through the April 2 deadline," said a spokesperson for the Harris campaign on Wednesday.

O'Neill Burke and Harris are both bidding to succeed incumbent Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, a progressive who is not seeking a third term. The winner will face Republican Bob Fioretti in November's election.

After being elected as co-chair of the Republican National Committee on March 8, Lara Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, created a new Republican "election integrity division" which she claimed would receive "massive resources" to ensure fair elections.

During a Fox News interview she said: "We will have trained poll watchers, poll observers, poll workers, people in tabulation centers all across this country."

On January 2 Ken Block, a technology expert hired by Trump's 2020 election campaign to search for voter fraud, insisted the election had been free and fair in an opinion piece published by USA Today.

After hitting out at Trump's "steady diet of lies and innuendo," he said: "If voter fraud had impacted the 2020 election, it would already have been proven. Maintaining the lies undermines faith in the foundation of our democracy."