LAKE COUNTY - Republican candidate for US Senate Mark Curran lost his re-election bid for Lake County sheriff in 2018 by 137 votes in a county election where 245,000 votes were cast. That meant Curran lost by .000559 percent of the votes cast - insignificant most of the time.
What happened to Curran in 2018 reinforces the fact that some call a "nominal" number of non-citizens "mistakenly" registered to vote through the Secretary of State's office does matter, Curran told Illinois Review Wednesday.
"Anybody that voted as an illegal citizen should be put up for deportation immediately," Curran said. "The message needs to be loud and clear. [Secretary of State] Jesse White violated his constitutional oath. There needs to be a federal investigation into what transpired."
The Secretary of State's office notified the State Board of Elections about the computer "glitch", and the ISBE sent letters in December to involved counties where non-citizens were mistakenly registered to vote. Bloomington writer Diane Benjamin obtained a copy of the letter and wrote about it on her blog - and was picked up by Illinois Review. Since that time, the story has moved into legacy news sources in Chicago and Springfield.
For the most part, Chicago media shrugged off the "mistake," as did other Left-promoting political websites such as Capitol Fax.
Curran continued as to why the controversy should not be swept under the rug.
"People like me, who lost by 137 votes in a race with a quarter of a million votes, and were up by a 1000 votes when the polls closed - lost because almost 70% of the late-arriving votes went Democrat - yeah, I don't trust the process, I don't trust any of this," he said.
Authorities are saying 740,000 Illinoisans have been registered to vote through the state's automatic voter registration put into effect after signed into law by Republican Governor Bruce Rauner in 2017.
State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich reports that the board has found 19 actually voted of those 574 non-citizens "mistakenly" registered through the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The Illinois Republican Party has called for the automatic voter registration system to be temporarily suspended pending investigation.
Curran re-emphasized the seriousness of voting when illegally registered to vote. Non-citizens voting is considered a federal felony.
"I would support an immediate process for deportation of anyone that voted that wasn't eligible to vote. I would also support a RICO investigation into anyone that helped to make this process happen," Curran said.
"I think the beauty of having President Trump is the Justice Department - the US Attorney in Chicago - the FBi - they're fearless. They're the Democrats' worst nightmare, and I think we're going to find out what happened."
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