Election Day Registration Woes
Election Day Registration Woes
James Thorpe
In the heavily populated areas of Illinois election day voter registration will be more restricted thanks to a new ruling. Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan ruled that voter registration at polling places in highly populated areas such as Chicago is unconstitutional reversing a law rolled out on Election Day in 2014. The law was originally received with a large welcome as there were massive lines at polling places in November of 2014 and the law was made permanent last year in 2015. The law saw 110,000 people register on Primary Day in March alone. Republicans opposed the law because in rural and many GOP-leaning areas of Illinois voters may have to travel a larger distance to the clerk’s office to register.
"While it may be true that the polling place registration option can assist voters in certain populous counties, that option cannot be provided at the expense of lower population counties, thereby decreasing their political representation in Illinois," Der-Yeghiayan stated. "The application of this legislation favors the urban citizen and dilutes the vote of the rural citizen."
This ruling has started to cause problems for Jurisdictions as they seek to figure out how to exactly accommodate voters who were looking forward to same-day voter registration that had been allowed during the primaries. The change will impact voters in 21 of Illinois' 102 counties and five cities: Chicago, Aurora, Rockford, Bloomington and East St. Louis. Some people have argued that the lawsuit and ruling is merely a political move by the GOP to stop voters who more than likely would vote for the Democrats in urban areas. According to an article by ChicagoBusiness.com Cook County Clerk David Orr, a Democrat, was quoted as saying that it was a “thinly veiled partisan effort" to disenfranchise voters. The lawsuit was brought by the legal wing of the Illinois Policy Institute, an organization that Governor Rauner has donated to and brought into his organization. The ruling brings many questions to the forefront just as the original lawsuit and the motives behind it have brought questions to the forefront that may have not been asked or answered.
