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The Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight will now come to order.
We have three items on today's agenda.
First, a substitute ordinance amending municipal code Section
2-156-070 to prohibit use or
disclosure of confidential information for prediction markets or event
contracts. Second is a resolution calling on US Attorney
Andrew Boutros to resign. And finally, a subject matter hearing on current
democracy and election reform policy proposals.
We will begin with a roll call to establish quorum.
Please know that your yes or present response will be deemed a yes vote when this
quorum call is used for a reference vote for later items.
Chairman Martin is present. Vice Chair Hadden?
Present.
Alderman Lee?
Alderman O'Shea?
Alderwoman Taylor? Alderwoman Tabaras? Alderman Taliaferro?
Alderman Waguespack? Alderman Sposato?
Alderwoman Nugent?
Alderman Vazquez? Alderman Riley?
Alderman Lawson?
We have a quorum. Non-committee members, I want to
recognize Alderman Rodriguez, Knutson, and I believe Mina
Hoppenworth was here a second ago.
We have
one person who requested remote participation.
I don't see her on, so we will move
forward. And let's see. At this time, we will
begin public comment. The period is set for 30 minutes.
Out of respect for everyone's time, each speaker is limited to three minutes of
public comment. Two people have signed up for public comment.
And the committee received two written pieces of public
comment, which were sent out to committee members via email.
The first person to provide public comment at the hearing is George
Blakemore. Mr. Blakemore, please begin when you are ready.
Thank you, Chairman.
Reading this fundamental,
it says, "by confidentiality."
It needs to be disclosed when you have these
bids, your background.
So,
I am
against this item.
Your background
needs to be exposed. Who are you?
What's your past? Why are you keeping it
confidential?
What are you hiding?
It should be exposed.
So you heard me, whoever brought up this item, I'm totally
against this one, and I've given you logical
reasons.
You got something you hiding,
but you want to receive contracts from the government?
You're hiding something? You're in the closet?
You're unprofessional,
so you don't want the people to know.
This is public money.
The public. It's like a public washroom.
Everyone can use it, but the rich and the
powerful, they can say, "I don't want that to be
told."
So you have the right one in the mic.
The next one also,
it says about these discussion of current
democracy and the election reform policy.
These elections are rigged.
The board of election is rigged.
Mrs.
Jessica always get up and rap back about the courts.
They rigged. The whole system
is corrupt.
And I'll holler it out, all Democrats, and one of them will say, "Oh, no.
They're not like the old Democrats.
I'm not one of them." But you sit in the company
of them, and I have not seen you challenge them
One star can light up the darkness. You challenge them.
You don't owe them nothing.
You don't owe them crap. Be safe. It's not a part of it.
You don't owe them nothing. So challenge
them. Let your light shine.
Let your little light shine. So again, it's very
important, ethics. That means morals,
it means honesty, it means integrity.
This you all do not have.
You're not ethical and good public servants.
It's corruption, fraud, and abuse here.
Thank you, Mr. Blakemore. Recognizing Alderman Waguespack and Riley for purposes of
quorum. Our next and final speaker is Zoe Lee.
Yeah, you're right, George. It's
unethical.
It's incompetence.
To honestly be a constituent, and my mother being a
constituent, and this is her hometown,
and to watch 50 aldermen
for three years ignore
everything that I've asked you guys to check for.
Now, y'all don't like my attitude.
Now I'm a jerk. Now I'm rude. Now
I'm this. I wasn't none of this when I first started.
Y'all didn't even know how I spoke when I was outside protesting.
But because you guys don't know how to
be public servants that we pay you for,
the only reason why you're in these positions is because of us.
We can't get any help, especially if you're Black.
If you Black, look, I don't even see, there's what?
A half,
two half Black people that's on here that makes one whole
Black alderman, Matt and Maria Hadden.
No Black aldermans come to this, and this is
ethics oversight. Why should they
when we keep voting them back in
and then keep saying that it's engineered,
it's by design.
All that HBCU
education we got, all that HBCU energy, all that Black and
proud, when y'all wear y'all little Black things to let
people know you're in the Black Caucus, and look at our communities.
Straight war zones.
Why they still look like war zones with all the HBCU money that y'all
get, all the education that you get,
all these civil rights attorneys?
You work for Attorney General Matt Martin.
We coming here three years showing you and telling you the RICO.
One big criminal organization.
That's what
this body is.
This is what this whole
building is.
We coming with the evidence. We're showing
the RICO,
and you guys will have this stern face because you're all indoctrinated.
Y'all all are thinking socialism and communism is going to change
America when all the people that come from these other countries have
fled from theirs. I don't know what y'all thought from
2019 to now. Have you seen it's a complete
disaster? All you do is steal
and then call it a humanitarian crisis, and then say it's
white supremacy.
And then for us, y'all say it's engineered and designed
because we're oppressed, even though I'm not.
As the RICO continues.
Thank you. That concludes our public comment.
Our first order of business is the Rule 45 report from June
2026, which was distributed to the committee via email.
Can I get a motion to approve that report? Alderman Riley so moves.
All those in favor signify by saying "Aye." All those opposed.
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
We will now discuss the first substantive item on today's agenda, Substitute
Ordinance 2026-0025003.
Can I have a motion to accept the substitute ordinance?
Alderman Bowman Lisa moves.
All those in favor
signify by saying "Aye." All those opposed.
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
The substitute is now before the committee.
I will turn things over to our colleague, Alderman Knutson.
Thank you so much,
Chairman Martin, and good morning to all committee members.
Happy to be here today. I'm presenting today hoping to get your support for the
passage... You guys can get a microphone. Excellent.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Wow, even better. All right, I'll start over.
Thank you, Chair Martin. I present today hoping for passage of the
Prediction Market Ordinance, which amends Section
2-156-070
of the Chicago Municipal Code, governing the use or disclosure of
confidential information by city officials, employees,
appointees, and former elected officials.
Chicago's Ethics Ordinance has long prohibited city employees and elected
officials from using confidential information obtained through their public
service for personal gain.
This ordinance does not change that principle.
It simply makes clear that the ordinance also applies to new
prediction markets and event contracts.
Event contracts are a yes or no bet on whether something will
or will not happen.
These have grown dramatically over the past few years in markets
like Kalshi and Polymarket.
These platforms allow people to wager on everything from elections and government
policy to military operations and corporate announcements.
They're evolving rapidly, and so are the opportunities for someone with inside
information to profit.
This is no longer hypothetical. Earlier this year, a US Army Special
Forces soldier was federally charged after allegedly using
classified information about a planned military operation in
Venezuela to place bets on a prediction market.
According to the federal prosecutors, roughly $30,000 in
wagers turned into more than $40,000 in profits.
Similarly, Kalshi, one of the prediction market platforms,
recently suspended three congressional candidates for placing
bets on their own elections in Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota.
Whether the examples involve national security, elections, or could be
zoning, they all point to the same issue.
When confidential information can be turned into personal profit in a free market,
governments need clear ethical guardrails.
That's what this ordinance provides.
It says that if you learn something because the people of Chicago trusted you with
a public job, you cannot use that information to participate in a
prediction market or help someone else to do so.
A few clarifications. This ordinance does not regulate prediction markets
themselves. It does not decide whether companies like Kalshi can
operate in Chicago. Those are questions currently being debated
elsewhere. Our responsibility today is much narrower.
Our goal is to establish ethical expectations for the people who work for
Chicago. Corporation counsel reviewed this ordinance and concluded that
it's a clarification of our existing code, not the creation of a new
standard. Governor Pritzker has already adopted the same approach for state
employees through an executive order, recognizing that our ethics rules should
evolve alongside new technologies.
These markets are going to continue to grow.
Technology's not going to change backwards.
But one thing should remain constant: confidential information should never become
an investment opportunity. To close, this ordinance has been
reviewed by the Department of Law, the Department of Ethics, and the city's Office
of the Inspector General, all of which support the ordinance.
It builds on best practices in the fields of ethics and will serve as an
important safeguard against any potential misuse of
information in prediction markets for financial gain.
I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, and I would also like to personally
thank and recognize Christopher Kolb in the back, assistant
corporation counsel, who provided the memo included in the committee
materials that we sent out before today.
He's ready to answer any legal questions that may arise, and I yield the remainder
of my time to the chair and ask my colleagues for their support in passing
this important legislation.
Thank you, Alderman. We are going to open up the floor to questions, first from
committee members.
Any questions or comments?
Alderwoman Hadden, and then Alderman Sposato afterwards.
Thank you, Chair.
My question is, in doing your kind of
research and working on this, I think we've all noticed
the
proliferation of predictive market
and other betting access kind of everywhere.
So in thinking about, I know this is one part of the code,
which thank you for working on this clarification.
And wondering if, I don't know, you have any other observations to
share with the committee on what this larger
world of predictive markets and betting, and
you can't watch a sports game
without something come up. Kalshi dominates my
TikTok feed, and I'm just like, "Leave me alone." So yeah, any
observations around this kind of new world?
Yeah, and it's changing by the day.
I think parallel to AI, the growth
is
100 times more rapid than we're able to keep up
with in regulation. I don't know what the
future of these markets will be at the federal level.
Right now, there's not much being done to classify them
as classic insider trading. But what I do know is on
these platforms where you can make a bet about
basically anything,
there's a lot of information that we, but also our
staffs, appointees, former elected officials, could bring
in to a bet, even indirectly.
I think of the example of the question of will the Chicago Bears
stay in Chicago, choose Hammond? It's a contested item
that there's a lot of bets being made on right now.
There's a lot of people at the state and city level that learn
information about what's coming next on that ahead of the public.
So the goal with this is to really explicitly clarify
that it is prohibited
for those actors within our city government.
And again, I'm glad that at the state level it's been done
through the governor's executive order.
Yeah, but more to be done here. I definitely agree with the theme.
Great. First want to recognize Alderwoman Tabaras for purposes of
quorum. Also noting that Alderwoman Taylor is with
us, and she had
requested remote participation in the committee meeting pursuant to
Rule 59 due to qualifying event. Can I get a motion to allow her to attend?
Alderman Vasquez so moves. All those in favor signify by saying "Aye." All those
opposed? Noting the one opposition, opinion of the chair, the
ayes have it, and Alderwoman Taylor is allowed to attend the committee meeting
by remote means. We'll next move to Alderman Sposato and
then Alderman Riley.
Thank you, Chairman. Appreciate it.
I'm not sure who I'm directing the question to.
I don't know if, Alderman Gnudzen, are you handling the questions?
So-
Yeah, if it's a question for me.
Right. Okay.
Yeah.
All right. So my question to you is, can you use an example of like what we could
do as aldermen could be really bad.
So like for example, let's just say we're all a bunch
of degenerate gamblers or something here, and we wanted to bet that
the Bears are going to stay in Chicago. Do we feel that's a violation?
I'm going to do everything I can to keep them here, so as most of all, I'm not
going to raise taxes, that's for sure, but
So can you give me an example of some bad things we could do?
And you mentioned about people betting on their own elections.
Personally, I think I would bet every person in this room would bet on themselves
that they're going to win their election. I certainly would.
If I had an opportunity to bet on myself, I'll bet on myself, so why is that a bad
thing?
Yeah.
So.
Well, in-
I'm not betting against myself anyways
... the theme of personal bet, it's always a good idea to bet on yourself, but not
on a prediction market for financial gain.
Well, Pete Rose bet on himself, and he was banned from baseball, so.
Yeah. No, so I think the question that comes up is, too, you
can bet against yourself. Only you in your mind know whether or not
you're going to stay in that race. I was brainstorming some examples earlier
on how an aldermanic staff might be able to make
bets based on the outcome of an election.
Say you come in a few weeks to the office a few weeks
before your election, and you're so downtrodden and
you're swearing and upset. Maybe
one of your staffers sees that and is like, "Oh, he's
going to lose. I'm going to make that bet." There's just a lot of ways we
don't even think about how the nature of our jobs,
and really all city staff, we learn a lot and we see
a lot that isn't necessarily publicly available.
You can
skew that into a bet. The hope is,
and I'm very confident that the large, large,
large super majority of actors in city government
would not make this kind of bet, would not do this kind of thing, but we have
to close the hole explicitly for those who might.
There's unlimited hypotheticals, right?
I think in a lot of conversations, the hypothetical of the knowledge we have
around zoning projects, the knowledge that we have around
large events like Lollapalooza and other festivals,
the All-Star
coming up.
We learn many things first, and often we learn them first without even
realizing that we have access to the information before the public.
So it's really a clarification, really just trying to create that guardrail.
Okay. Not exactly I understand everything, but I certainly
support it.
But I tell you what, if I have an opportunity to bet on myself in this election,
I'm betting the house on me, so. As I would think most guys are.
And I'm not a gambler, that's something I would bet my house on.
But thank you, I understand your intent. I fully support it.
Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Alderman. Alderman Riley next.
Thank you, Chairman. And I want to compliment my colleague for
bringing the ordinance forward.
I don't spend any time with the prediction markets, and as everyone knows, I'm
not a big fan of gambling in general.
I just have one question, it's more of a technical one, and that is,
while I plan on voting for this and support it
fully, how will the city
go about-
Enforcement
... enforcement and tracking who might be
running afoul of the new law, and how would
they go about doing it? Again, it's more my own ignorance about how
the prediction markets work and how
you're registered or not. So maybe if you could just get into that very briefly,
Alderman, that would be helpful.
Yep, and it's a good question. I'm going to pass it, if it's okay, really quick
to Christopher Kolb with the Corporation Council.
Hello. Good morning, Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight, Chairman Martin,
and members of the committee, as well as guests.
My name is Christopher Kolb. I'm Assistant Corporation Council in the Department of
Law. And, not to pass it even further, but I do
think ultimately this is going to be a question for the Board of Ethics.
I think it's going to be
a fact-specific investigation and then enforcement action,
depending on the specifics. As Alderman Knudson,
I think, kind of alluded to in his examples,
it's kind of a nuanced area where you may have very clear cut, is Alderman
Riley going to testify in today's committee hearing?
You have that information in your head, but there are other things
that you may be able to use your information, but it's not a
direct action that you can
control. Which casino operator is going to get the casino
license? You may have some insight on that, but you can't actually
control that decision. And-
Too soon.
Sorry, Chairman. Or sorry, Alderman.
But determining who knows what and when
and how that influences an outcome, I think is ultimately going to be the
determination that the Board of Ethics is going to have to
come down on.
Well, I understand that, and I have faith that rulemaking can address a
lot of that stuff. And again, I compliment Alderman Knudson for bringing
this forward, and I'm going to vote for it.
But how would it come to light? How would someone know
if one of us were playing around in one of these markets, unless
we were to reveal that to somebody? Is it publicly reported?
How would one go about assembling the evidence to
make that connection?
Yeah, and it's not publicly reported, but right now Kalshi and
Polymarket have a lot of pressure.
They want to be viewed as legitimate operators.
So in the examples where the three congressional
candidates placed bets on themselves, it was actually
Kalshi who outed them for making those bets.
There's a lot of pressure for them to do some self-policing.
They're trying to get ahead of that before it's potentially down the line
built into some federal law. But right now they are doing
internal investigations and letting governments know.
Okay. All right. Well, thank you for answering my questions.
And again, Alderman Knudson, thanks for being ahead of the curve.
I know government struggles daily to keep up with technology and
these emerging technologies. So thanks for bringing it forward, and I plan on
supporting it. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you. Anybody else with questions?
Seeing none, can I get a motion to approve?
So moved by Alderman Riley. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." All those
opposed? In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it. The substitute is passed.
Good work, Alderman Knutson. Thank you for joining us.
We are now going to move on to our second item, which is
Resolution
2026-0026273.
Alderman Rodriguez, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Chair Martin and members of the committee.
I'm here today to urge you to join me in asking for the resignation of Assistant
United States Attorney Andrew Boutros.
Calling on the Assistant United States Attorney to resign
is a matter I do not take lightly. However, after witnessing the
continued erosion of trust and confidence in our under
AUSA, Andrew Boutros, I must urge you to support
this resolution because public confidence in the justice system is not
optional. It is essential.
We must remember that the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District
of Illinois exercises extraordinary authority over the lives,
liberty, and constitutional rights of people throughout Chicago and Northern
Illinois. That authority must be exercised fairly, professionally,
transparently, and without regard to political pressure
or viewpoint.
This resolution does not seek to interfere with legitimate federal law enforcement.
It does not excuse unlawful conduct.
It affirms a basic principle. Prosecutions must be
lawful, impartial, and worthy of public confidence.
Recent events have raised grave concerns from the beginning of Mr.
Boutros' time as AUSA. The Northern District of Illinois has been in
turmoil. From overcharging peaceful protesters almost from his
first day to the mass exodus of legal talent from the
Ninth District's
team of attorneys, the office has been rocked with departing
attorneys and growing scandals. The prosecution known as the Broadview
Six began as a high-profile felony conspiracy case,
which was later narrowed, reduced, and ultimately dismissed
with prejudice. In connection with that prosecution, a federal judge identified
serious concerns regarding the government's conduct before the grand
jury, including improper vouching, communications with grand
jurors outside the grand jury room, the exclusion of
jurors who disagreed with the government's theory of case.
This matter does not stand alone. The resolution describes additional cases
tied to the same grand jury and similar concerns, including dismissals,
acquittals, unusual grand jury no bills,
and deferred prosecution outcomes.
More than 100 former federal prosecutors have publicly expressed
concern that the office's reputation for integrity, professionalism,
and political independence has been tarnished. That matters.
Federal prosecutions carry enormous consequences,
even when charges are later dismissed.
They can impose reputational harm, legal expense, emotional distress,
and chilling effects on First Amendment activity.
Now adding insult to injury, AUSA Boutros just last week at a
press conference decided to attack the entire Illinois
judiciary.
That this AUSA, whose office has seen a mass departure of experienced
attorneys,
overseen multiple ethically challenged prosecutions that
have fallen apart before trial,
this attack on integrity of the Illinois bench is
particularly appalling. The Northern District of Illinois has a proud
history of prosecuting serious crime and public corruption while adhering to the
rule of law. Restoring that reputation requires more than
internal statements or after-the-fact dismissals.
It requires accountability, transparency, and leadership that commands
confidence,
mostly from the public.
For those reasons, this resolution calls on a US Attorney, Andrew
Boutros, to resign, calls for an open and merit-based
process for new leadership, and urges a full independent review of the practices
that led us here. As both Senator Durbin and Senator
Duckworth said in their joint statement about a month ago,
quote, "Andrew Boutros' time as interim
US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois has been riddled with chaos,
deep internal dysfunction, and alleged misconduct,"
and they call for his resignation, and I urge passage by this committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Alderman. I will now open up the floor to questions from committee
members to start, and then non-committee members.
Any questions? Oh, recognizing Alderman Talia Ferro for purposes of quorum.
Thank you. Alderman Vasquez?
I will only apologize that I don't have questions, but I do have
comment.
One, I want to thank the lead sponsor, Mike Rodriguez, for
introducing this. I think watching how the Trump
administration has
actively worked to attack dissent, to attack free
speech
is concerning. Seeing it happen in real time here in Chicago
because of Boutros furthermore.
In September, I think many of us here know that there were a number of people,
myself included, who'd gone up to Broadview to speak out against
what clearly feels like watching
an internment camp, and that's putting it nicely at
Broadview. A number of us there had gotten
attacked by the federal government or federal agents, teargassed, all of the above,
but made the decision to exercise our freedom of speech to do so.
To then watch six individuals who were doing the same
actively be indicted for doing so and attacked,
I think you put it-
... politely as far as how people's lives get impacted by such activity.
I've gotten to witness some of the members who were there
actively suffer through what it looked like to be indicted by the federal
government, to be treated
harshly just for expressing their First Amendment speech.
And then to watch that trial play out, to then see
what was occurring as far as prosecutors and vouching that occur with the grand
jury, and then further cover-up of that activity, to
put a finer point as to what was being done incorrectly and unethically,
serves as evidence as to why Boutros needs to resign.
But then to watch it, how it also affected other cases, like the
Loreto case,
only leads to more lack of confidence in the
judicial system.
It is clear that Boutros needs to resign and step
down just to add the confidence back.
It can't be stated how much it actually affects different people's lives to be
affected this way, and it shows a callousness, a disregard for
freedom of speech, and a cruelty that should never be part of the judicial system.
So,
yeah, as someone who's got to experience secondhand and watching
it,
absolutely I'm in support. I would urge all of our members to
sign on board
to show that we can't stand for that, and we actually need a justice system that
people can have confidence in and believe in, and to be able to make some level of
justice come out of what's happened, knowing how much it's
impacting so many people's lives, families, friends,
coworkers, and everyone else. So thank you for doing so.
I look forward to voting for this and speaking out in support of it in
council. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions or comments?
Seeing no hands raised, can I get... Oh, Alderman Riley.
Oh, Alderman Riley moves to pass. All those in favor signify by saying "Aye." All
those opposed? One opposition. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have
it. The resolution is passed. Congratulations, Alderman.
And that is that for that item. We now will move to the
third and final item agenda, which is a subject matter hearing
on the current state of democracy and election reform policy proposals.
Here to provide testimony are representatives from five different
organizations. And you can start making your way up to the front as I
call your name.
And apologies if I mispronounce your name.
We have Dan Ashurst, the executive director of Fair Vote Illinois;
Frederic Desrosiers, policy director at Chicago Votes; Alicia
Kaplan, executive director at Reform for Illinois; Priscilla Mims, league
voter
service team lead at the League of Women Voters; and lastly, Adam
Lasker, the general counsel at the Chicago Board of Election
Commissioners. I will turn it over to each of
these panelists for brief remarks, emphasis on brief,
and we will take remarks in that order.
So once we are settled, Mr. Ashurst, we would like to start
with you.
Great to be here.
Thanks.
Good.
Good morning, Chair Martin, members of the committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
As Chair Martin said, my name is Dan Ashurst.
I'm the executive director of Fair Vote Illinois.
We are a nonpartisan grassroots organization advocating
for ranked-choice voting, which is already used in
cities like New York City, Minneapolis, San Francisco,
Santa Fe, Portland, and as of last month,
Washington, D.C.
So you know where I stand on it going in.
I'm a little biased,
but I'm here to be a resource to give you a useful,
honest picture
of what RCV does for both voters and candidates,
what it would save the city,
and where the open questions are. Ranked-choice
voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference instead of
picking just one.
If your first choice can't win, your vote may count for your second or third choice
instead. It reduces vote splitting and the spoiler problem.
You're not stuck choosing between the candidate that you like and the one that you
think can win.
But the main point that I want to share with you today is that ranked-choice voting
would save money for the city of Chicago.
Chicago's 2023 runoff election cost the city roughly
$19.8 million, according to the Board of Elections' cost
analysis. That's the cost of the runoff itself, after you
take out permanent staff and fixed costs that the city pays either way.
And that cost has gone up over each of the last three cycles.
And that's just the city's bill.
In the 2023 mayoral runoff election, the two mayoral
campaigns spent close to $19 million during the five-week
runoff alone,
according to campaign finance filings.
So a second election is a cost to everyone, both
voters and candidates.
Ranked-choice voting produces a majority winner in just one
election. Whoever wins still has to earn a majority in the final round of
counting. Voters just don't need to take a second trip to the polls,
and the city doesn't have to pay for one.
Where ranked-choice voting is actually used, voters get it, and they like it.
So in New York City,
the 2025 primaries, 96% of voters told an
exit poll that their ballot was simple to fill out.
Across the country, that number typically runs about 80% or higher.
And representation also goes up.
After New York City adopted RCV, it elected its first
majority women city council and its most diverse council
ever,
and it has kept both since.
For candidates, RCV does not put incumbents at a
disadvantage.
A Fair Vote study comparing RCV and non-RCV cities found that the voting
system is not a significant factor in whether incumbents win
re-election. There's a graphic on the
one-pager that I
shared around in advance with that data.
Moreover, ranked-choice voting can actually make the experience of
running for office better.
There's a strong incentive to reach past your own base and run a less
negative and more constructive and issue-focused race.
As former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf put it, quote,
"I know that ranked-choice voting is controversial in Oakland,
but I'm a fan.
As a candidate, you have to talk to everybody, even people who you know
you're not their first choice.
But you can still be their second choice or
third. It changes the way you run campaigns."
Ranked-choice voting is one of the fastest-growing voting reforms in the
country. Forty-nine jurisdictions across 22 states
and DC use it or have adopted it, reaching close to
14 million voters.
RCV implementation, though, is worth getting right.
It's crucial that we're careful, taking the process step by step,
following established best practices for voter education,
and being mindful of the cost on election administrators, both in
money and in staff time.
So we're very happy to see this committee looking at RCV early in an
exploratory stage.
Fair Vote Illinois is happy to connect the committee and election administrators to
RCV experts, as well as share research to support
responsible pro-democracy policymaking.
Thank you very much. I'm happy to take questions.
Thank you very much for your remarks.
Next up, we will have Frederique Desrosiers from Chicago Votes.
Hello. Thank you for that introduction.
I also want to give Ellison an opportunity to introduce herself as well.
Hi there. My name is Ellison Radach. I serve as the policy fellow at Chicago Votes.
Thank you. So today we're here to talk about creating a mobile
voting pilot in Chicago. At Chicago Votes, our
mission and motto is to meet young people and people where they are.
So just to give us a quick introduction, we are a nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization that wants to expand democracy and increase access
to civic participation, specifically for young
people.
So, what is mobile voting? So, a mobile voting vehicle would be a van
or a trailer that is secure. It's operated by the Board of
Elections, and it's outfitted with voting equipment that you would find in a
normal polling location across the city.
It would travel to pre-announced locations like schools, college campuses,
shelters, and community hubs during early voting and election day.
This mobile voting location would serve as a universal polling location,
meaning that any resident in the city of Chicago would be able to vote there.
It would follow the same procedures for eligibility verification,
voter check-in, registration, and ballot tabulation that is
seen in polling locations across the city.
This would have a strict chain of custody as the Board of Elections already
does. The van would be ADA accessible and staffed with trained Board of
Elections officials, and it would use certified equipment to preserve
security and protect integrity for ballot access.
So, the main reasons why we think this is a great idea is because it brings
ballot access to where people already are, thinking high schools, transit
hubs, shelters, senior centers, community events.
It would also create access, especially for folks who are experiencing homelessness
or people with disabilities, and just kind of reduces some of those barriers
that suppress turnout. It would target underserved
populations, so it could be data-driven to deploy to wards with
low youth voter turnout, transit deserts, concentrated underrepresented
communities, and help
close turnout gaps for people by age, race, and neighborhood.
This actually already happens in several large US jurisdictions in
Los Angeles County, San Diego County, and King County in Seattle,
and has shown that it has a lot of positive
outcomes and has worked in other
places. It also encourages strong civic participation.
Placing vans at schools and campuses can help normalize voting for young people,
and paired on-site registration and civic education can help support long-term
participation.
So, some concerns, questions that we anticipate about this pilot
program would be around ballot security.
So, this would require the same Board of Elections certifications and processes
that happen at normal polling locations.
It would be the same certified equipment, seals, and documented custody
chains,
with the same kind of overnight storage and public reporting that you would see at
a normal polling location. As far as the legal and authority questions, we want
to use this pilot to be able to surface statutory needs, see if this
is actually able to expand voter access to underrepresented groups in our
city. We want to limit this pilot to designated stops to treat them as
rotating temporary voting centers.
The operational complexity, like I said, we want to do this on a small
scale with the full support of the Board of Elections, with rehearsals
and redundancy in equipment to mitigate any risk or any concerns that may
come up day of,
and with a clear public schedule to maintain turnout and perception.
And we also want to make sure that the implementation of this is equitable and that
we're actually meeting underrepresented voters where they're at.
So these sites would be chosen based off of transparent and data-driven measures
of voter access and need across our city.
So, we have a few due diligences in order to implement.
One, we would need some legal and policy clearances, so just make sure that this is
in compliance with the election code.
Identify whether this would have to be a municipal ordinance, a city council
ordinance, or if any sort of legal changes are needed to authorize this
kind of pilot. And we'd also need to work with different agencies
like the Cook County Board, like the Board of Elections,
city colleges, campus administrators, State Board of Election,
and all the different Chicago Board of Elections to make sure that we have proper
staffing, chain of custody, and we're fully in compliance.
Like we said, mobile voting vans, these are practical and equity-focused.
They're made to make sure that underrepresented voters, like young
people, unhoused community members, seniors, people with
disabilities, and people in transit-poor areas are able to
access the vote like they should be able to.
So we have a few more slides. We won't read through them all.
But you all have these available for any questions you may have.
Next steps, we would want to work with the Fair Access to Democracy Council
that was recently formed to discuss how much this would
cost, budget concerns, legal analysis, and
outreach to other agencies that we've mentioned before.
And so, I think that's all we have.
Thank you.
Thank you both very much.
Next up, we will hear from Elisa Kaplan, Executive Director for Reform for
Illinois.
Good afternoon, Chair Martin and members of the committee.
My name is Elisa Kaplan. I'm the Executive Director of Reform for Illinois.
We are a nonpartisan organization that has tracked money in Illinois
for more than three decades. I'm here today to talk about dark
money in Chicago elections, why it's getting worse, and
why this committee should consider proposals to fix it.
Dark money, which is political spending whose original source is
hidden, has exploded since the Supreme Court's Citizens United
decision.
In just the last two presidential election cycles, so in just four
years, dark money in federal campaigns nearly doubled from
$1 billion in 2020 to $2 billion in
2024.
Unfortunately, Illinois is not immune to this national trend.
In the past three years, we've watched anonymously funded groups
shape a Chicago mayoral election, a housing referendum,
a Cook County commissioner's race, an Illinois Supreme Court contest,
statehouse races, and even school board elections.
It's important to note that dark money is not limited to any
party, candidate, or issue. It appears across the
political and ideological spectrum.
When campaigns are funded by unknown mega-donors, it reinforces
people's perception that government decisions are made in shadowy back
rooms by powerful figures they will never see and can't
hold accountable. It breeds conspiracy theories and eats
away at the trust that is essential to democracy.
Chicago's 2023 mayoral race showed how dark money can
infiltrate local elections. Two nearly identically
named leadership committees, the New Leadership for
Chicago and the Chicago Leadership Committee, poured hundreds of thousands
of dollars into campaigns supporting two mayoral candidates
without disclosing where a dollar of it came from.
Dark money also played a significant role in the battle over the Bring Chicago Home
referendum, where at least $800,000 in dark money was
spent on campaign messaging through a nonprofit that did not have to disclose
its donors.
Reform for Illinois has developed a proposal that would fix these problems.
Dark money emerges when donors funnel funds through shell
organizations, often newly created nonprofit
organizations with deceptive or meaningless names like We Love
Chicago, that aren't required to disclose their contributors.
This makes it impossible for voters to know who is paying to influence their
vote.
Our proposal has three key elements.
First, it requires trace through disclosure, a kind of money trail,
so voters can identify the original source of funds.
In other words, it requires those donor shell organizations to
disclose their own contributors.
Second, the proposal requires disclosure of top funders on
political advertising so voters know who is financing the
messages they see.
Third, it strengthens the rules preventing coordination
between candidates and supposedly independent expenditure committees,
also known as super PACs.
The State Board of Elections has said they cannot enforce the ban on such
coordination until it gets more specific guidance from
legislators. This proposal would provide those clear rules so
that independent means what it says.
Without it, we are left with one of the last safeguards separating
candidates from unlimited political spending.
Disclosure legislation like this has been repeatedly upheld by the courts
and doesn't limit anyone's right to spend.
It simply lets the public see who is spending and why.
It informs voters and fights corruption.
Voters have a right to know who is trying to buy their vote.
They should be able to ask a simple question, "Do I share the values
and interests of the people funding this message?" before they cast a
ballot.
Moreover, they should be able to follow the trail of money to ensure it doesn't
turn into a trail of favors. As the US Supreme Court
recently said, disclosure can, quote, "Deter actual
corruption and avoid the appearance of corruption by exposing
large contributions and expenditures to the light of publicity."
I urge this committee to consider our proposal.
Several states, including Alaska, California, Massachusetts,
Minnesota, and more, have already shown this kind of reform is both legally
sound and broadly popular. At the federal level, more than
200 members of Congress have sponsored a similar bill called the
DISCLOSE Act.
Chicago should not wait for the state to act or for the next election cycle
to produce even larger, more sophisticated dark money
operations that erode public trust and further
entrench this problem in our political system. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Next up, we will hear from Priscilla Mims from the League of
Women Voters.
Yes, I'm Priscilla Mims, representing today the League of Women Voters of
Chicago. The League is a nonpartisan, grassroots
organization working to protect and expand voting rights
and ensure everyone is represented in our democracy.
We empower voters and defend democracy through advocacy and
education.
One aspect of voting that the League has been focusing on is voting by
mail. To enhance the ability to be informed and
vote, the League is supporting allowing voters to return their
vote-by-mail ballots in the sealed return envelopes
at polling places on election day.
For many Chicago voters, voting by mail is the preferred way
to vote. It allows voters to choose when they will mark their ballots
and allows voters to research candidates while they are
voting. Voters are thus more easily able to be
informed and then vote, which is the goal of the League.
Under existing Illinois law, such vote-by-mail ballots may
be
returned via the mail or by delivering to secure drop
boxes provided by the applicable election authority.
Over 26% of the votes cast in Chicago for the March
17 primary were via vote by mail. Slightly
more than half of these were returned by mail, with the rest of
them being returned to secure drop boxes as reported by
the Chicago Board of Elections.
However, returning vote-by-mail ballots via the mail has become more
challenging. Prior to the March 17 primary, the
Chicago Board did much to publicize the recent change by the
United States Post Office as to when a piece of mail
may be postmarked, which can now be several business days
after a vote-by-mail envelope is mailed.
As a result, the Board of Elections urge voters to mail their ballots
at least one week prior to election day, or instead go to
a window at a post office during business hours to have the
return envelope postmarked, and this was to ensure the postmark
date would be on or before election day.
Alternatively, voters could instead utilize the drop
boxes provided by the Board,
if the voters could get to them.
For the March 17 primary, the Chicago Board of Elections had
52 drop box locations for return of the vote-by-mail
ballots,
and they were able to be used during early voting and on election day.
One voting center within each ward, plus the super site and
69 West Washington in downtown Chicago.
However, these locations are not within walking distance for many
voters. Therefore, the League has urged the Chicago Board of
Elections to allow all polling places on
election day to be utilized for return of vote-by-mail ballots.
This would mean that all voters, or at least the vast majority of
voters, would be within walking distance of the hundreds of polling
places open on election day. And let me be clear, these would be
returned in their sealed envelopes.
They would not be processed at the individual polling
locations, but returned ultimately to the
Chicago Board of Elections processing center, just as any
other vote-by-mail ballot is returned.
The League has discussed how this might be done with staff at the Board of
Elections and understands there are concerns.
Clearly, the administrative procedures need to be worked out and
potentials issues dealt with, including how to cover any
additional costs.
Nevertheless, the League believes that with sufficient time and support,
the Board of Elections could implement this, at least by the presidential
primary in 2028. The Chicago Board of
Elections has long been known to encourage voting by embracing new
procedures that make it easier to vote.
The League is urging the Board to take the additional steps to
encourage and enhance the use of voting by mail, and
we ask that the aldermen support this effort. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Next and last, we will
hear
from Adam Lasker from the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
Please begin when you can.
Thank you, Chairman Martin, Vice Chair Hadden, and-
Oh, and sorry to interrupt. Acknowledging non-committee member, Alderman Villegas.
Thank you, and sorry.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you to the rest of the members of the committee as well.
Adam Lasker, General Counsel for the Chicago Board of Elections.
I'm happy to field any questions later on the topics discussed by
these wonderful organizations to my left.
I came prepared to discuss essentially six main topics that would sort of be
updates of the state of elections in Chicago.
Also, seven policy considerations for policy funding and/or
legislative amendments that the Board has been considering.
So, with limited time, I'm just going to kind of breeze through them very quickly.
I was asked specifically by the committee to discuss protecting polling places
for the upcoming election from the possibility of federal agents.
I do want you to know that in the lead-up to the primary election,
we started this conversation with the State Board of Elections We started this
conversation with the Illinois Attorney General's office, the Cook County State's
Attorney's office. We've met with Illinois State Police, the FBI,
and most importantly, the Chicago Police Department.
The Chicago Police Department is very supportive and receptive of voting rights for
Chicago and understanding of the fact that the Board of Election Commissioners
is not a law enforcement agency. We're not military.
The people who are our troops on the ground are essentially our
election judges, and they range from high school students to
senior citizens and elderly. We will not be asking them to forcefully
remove federal agents from polling places.
However, we do have state laws, of course, that would prohibit any such
interference. The election code is already abundantly clear that you can't
interfere, and only authorized individuals are allowed inside a polling place.
Federal law prohibits armed agents, specifically prohibits
federal armed agents from entering polling places.
Not only is the agent himself or herself liable for that crime, but
so is the commanding officer.
So knowing that the law is on our side, we've also retained our
own outside counsel for emergency litigation as needed on election
day. Our outside counsel is in connection with the Illinois Attorney General's
office. They have already been working on pre-drafting any kind of emergency
litigation documents that are necessary.
The police department and the Board of Elections remain in strong belief that if
there is any incident at a polling place of violence, of
intimidation,
whether or not it's federal agents or anybody else, the best thing to do is call
911. The Board of Elections has
approximately 500 off-duty Chicago police officers and Cook County
sheriff's deputies under our control, and our
dispatch from Election Central on election day.
And so we have our own assistance in that regard.
But the on-duty police force, 911 is the best way to go.
We have our Election Central hotline, and we can dispatch our own folks out there
too, to get there quickly.
But we would certainly like to continue in cooperation with the police department.
We encourage any additional funding for election day that the City Council can
approve.
Topic number two, election judge recruitment.
Just to give you an update, we had
5,804 election judges served in the March primary.
As a reminder, the way that the election code, the statutory system works in
Illinois, not just for Chicago, but all around the state, is that
ward committee people, the ward committee persons in Chicago from the two leading
political parties, are supposed to provide the lists of election judges for
the city. In the suburbs and downstate areas, those are precinct
committee persons from the townships.
So of the 5,804 election judges who served in the March primary, we had a
total of 122 of them. Approximately 2% were
actually provided by the ward committee persons.
So although it's not the statutory scheme, the Board of Elections has been burdened
with about 98% of election judge recruitment.
We've been doing a good job with that,
filling our precincts with good workers and with alternates and
standby judges. We're averaging about
1,500 high school judges from at least 126
schools throughout Chicago, and I just want to say that the high school judges are
really excellent. We have a request in our legislation to
remove the GPA average. Under state law, the high school judges are required
to have a 3.0 grade point average. Creates two problems.
Number one, it can violate federal law for the
principals that have to certify grade information about students.
The principals pushed back on that, so we now ask the parents to certify that
requirement. We don't see the need for a 3.0 requirement.
We think that some kids who might be struggling in school, given the opportunity
for this kind of civic duty, get the training, the service, the payment,
might actually help get them back in line.
So, if there's a judge that doesn't behave well, we won't use them next time.
But we would like to encourage students, kind of regardless of grade point
average, to be able to do this civic duty.
For community outreach, we're engaged.
The Board of Elections is actively engaged with at least about 150 different
community organizations. We always welcome new information, new
ideas, new organizations. You can contact our office or have those
organizations contact us directly.
We currently have about 160 different community events on our
2026 calendar, where our community outreach division sends people out for voter
education, voter registration, equipment demonstrations, teaching
people how to use the voting machines.
Always looking for more ideas, so please contact us on that.
Our electoral board has continued success.
We're currently handling 38 objection cases against candidates,
35 of which running for school board offices, two for state representative,
and one for state senate.
That's our Senate session.
We got some data that over the past 10 years we've handled 721
electoral board objections. Only one of those cases has ever been
reversed by a court of review, and that was on a minor procedural
technicality. So I'm a baseball guy.
Our batting average is about 999 on electoral board
accuracy for the last 10 years. That's higher than the State Board of Elections and
the county officers electoral board.
Accessibility at the polling places.
We now have 1,291 precincts.
Of those precincts, about 884 of them are in the high tier,
365 in the medium tier for accessibility.
That's about 96.7% accessibility, which is a
tremendous improvement from when we started our ongoing
settlement agreement with the U.S.
Department of Justice, which started in 2017.
Back then, we had accessibility issues at almost all of our precincts.
We've come a very long way. I do need to point out that of the 880 actual
polling sites, only 29 of them, which is less than
three... It's about 3.3%. 29 of our polling places are in the
low accessibility tier. The medium tier means there's some blockages that we can
remedy through temporary remedies on election day.
The high tier means that they're fully accessible under the ADA, as
approved by the U.S. Department of Justice.
So of the 29 facilities that we're still using
that have the low accessibility, 100% of them are city-owned
buildings. 23 are Park District facilities, six are Chicago
public schools.
As a reminder, those buildings do need to be ADA compliant, whether they are used
as polling places or not. The Park District and schools have
been working with us over the years.
Again, we've come a long way, so this number is much lower than it used to be.
We just encourage
the city to continue funding for those accessibility purposes.
Again, they need to be accessible whether they are polling places or not.
Finally, as we get into policy reforms, it helps for you to know
where the voters are voting. We have so many different options now.
When you go back 20 years, 22 years ago,
we did not have no-excuse vote by mail, as we call it now.
It was, back then, absentee balloting.
So if you wanted to not vote in person, you had to
sign an affidavit that you were unavailable to go to your precinct on Election Day.
Back then,
almost all the voters went to their precinct, and that was the only option.
Unless they were going to be gone, then they had an absentee ballot.
Now we have no-excuse vote by mail. Anybody can do it.
We've got about 150,000, 160,000 people on our permanent roster.
In this last March primary,
only 45% of the voters went to their precincts on Election Day.
So we're down to under half of voters routinely showing up to the precincts.
Remember that we had a precinct reduction a few years ago.
The state mandated that, increasing the size of the precincts, the number of voters
in the precincts, thus reducing the number. We're not actually in compliance yet.
We've done the one reduction. We're going to have to reduce more to get in
compliance with that state law. But remember that what the state is looking
at is the fact that there's so many more options with early voting,
vote by mail, that didn't exist 20 years ago, that now less than half of our voters
are going to the precincts. Vote by mail accounted for about
26% of our ballots in March.
Early voting accounted for 24%.
The vote centers, which is when we keep our early voting sites open on Election
Day, accounted for 5%.
And that means with the early voting vote center combined, we had
29%, 29.2% of our voters went to a universal
voting site.
And, so that's it for just the topics I wanted to quickly address.
As far as some legislative proposals, as you heard, 30% of our voters are going
to universal voting sites. We would like to expand that.
A universal voting site is where any voter from the city can go to any of the
locations throughout the city. Our voters love that convenience.
It's only continuing to grow. We would like to, as we've talked about in our budget
hearings and so forth, our goal is to continue to increase the number
of universal vote centers while the number of our precincts go
down.
Related to that is the fact that we're going to need to do a new procurement soon
for new equipment. The voting machines we're using now were rolled out in
2020, so we're looking to do a procurement in 2028 for the
2030 elections. We very much want to move to a
ballot-on-demand system. That's where when the voter walks in
and they check in,
their specific ballot style prints out right then and
there, and they're handed the specific ballot.
That, I think, would be necessary for the mobile voting.
Because the only universal sites we have now, they use our touchscreen machines,
right? Our early voting sites, which are universal, are 100% touchscreen machines.
You get your ballot on the screen.
We can't fit all of our ballot styles.
We have over 3,000 ballot styles per election.
We really couldn't have a good selection of ballots inside a van.
But if we had a printer that could do ballot on demand, then
no matter where that van goes, no matter which voter uses it, we could
accommodate that.
Otherwise, how many touchscreen machines can we fit in the van?
If we're going to do this, which I'd be happy to drive that
van, by the way. That would be fun.
If we're going to do this, we want to be able to accommodate people.
We don't want to just set up one machine and have a long line.
So,
that goes along with universal vote center expansion, moving to a ballot-on-demand
system. This is modernization of elections as we're seeing it across the country,
by the way. Chicago has been pushing for this for a long time, but we're not at all
at the head of the pack. We would like to be, but we're not.
We would like to encourage Chicago Public Schools who have been working with us,
your
February and April elections, I believe they're doing this.
We want to have the schools doing either remote learning days or
teacher in-service days, get the students out of school on Election Day.
The legislature in Springfield has made the November general elections holidays.
The problem with that is that then the custodial crews that need to show up to open
the schools, we have to pay them holiday pay. So it's actually rather expensive.
And when I say we, I mean the schools. It's their duty under the state law.
And keeping in mind also that since the very beginning of democratic elections in
the United States, public buildings, particularly public school buildings, have
been the most common and customary sites for polling places.
So, we cannot force ourselves into a private location.
We must be able to use public buildings for elections.
But there's the security concern, of course, of having the children there on
Election Day. The
election code already encourages the in-service days.
We would support that,
as a not a mandate necessarily, but have the public school system
schedule it. I've got hanging on my office wall a schedule of all the elections
through the year 2040. I'm happy to share that with anybody so we can schedule
ahead of time.
I want you to know that we're experiencing a
burden this upcoming
September, October, November, particularly end of October, November.
In 2022, the state legislature changed the filing periods for all
elections. As candidates for office, you're probably aware that that filing
period was moved 28 days earlier. I think that they did that without
consulting with us. My suspicion is it was to help with the electoral board cases
having more time to work their way through the courts, because now we have 40 days
early for vote by mail, 40 days early, if we can, for early voting.
So they're trying to make it easier for the electoral board cases to get the whole
way through. The problem is, with our upcoming February
election, because those filing periods are 28 days earlier now,
it's overlapping with our administration of the November election.
So we need to do petition intake and electoral board hearings
At the same time that we're doing early voting and then counting vote by mail
ballots. So if you've been to your electoral board hearings in the basement
room that we use,
we would like to have electoral board hearings there, but that room
will be full of election judges processing vote by mail through all the scanners.
We can't do both things at the same time.
We are currently talking with the mayor's office and the budget office about
obtaining some additional space.
But that's going to be a recurring problem for us, to have to lease
additional space, additional staffing. It's an overlap.
So we would like to, while it's helpful for the general election
cycle, when it comes to your local elections every four years, that
28-day change has made a tremendous burden on us. It's costly.
We'd like to undo that,
to find the sweet spot for where to put that filing period.
I want you to know it's not being pushed by the Board of Elections, but I
personally attended committee hearings just like this at the state
legislature. There are state and national organizations that
are pushing to move the date of the local elections all throughout the
state. They're looking specifically at Chicago being the only
city, I believe they say the only major city in the United States that has its
municipal local elections in winter.
So there is a push to move your elections either to the
summertime or to a November election, just like the even years.
Again, that's not the Board of Elections, I'm just telling you I've been at those
committee hearings to hear those people speak.
You might want to follow up on that.
I'm almost done here. I already talked about the GPA requirement for the high
school students. So guess what? Really the
last thing on my list. This is federal law, but we think that Chicago,
if it stood up as a unified city council, could really push a national movement.
The federal tax code requires that
the poll workers are taxed.
If a poll worker makes over $600 a year,
they have to have their taxes withheld.
We are now paying for two elections a year.
You can cross that threshold. And so we have in recent
years, when the election judge pay went up several
years back, we've had to spend, I think it's approximately $200,000 a
year that we're spending on payroll services
to withhold those taxes. And I wonder how much tax we're even, I don't know, but I
wonder how much tax are we really drawing for these folks when we're
spending $200,000 a year to do it?
As a lawyer and an election lawyer, the
term poll tax is really ugly to me. Poll tax historically has meant
no taxes on the voters. But I think that there's a significant argument to be made
on a constitutional level that a poll tax could also be applied to the poll workers
who are really just doing their civic duty.
Nobody is getting rich off of coming in two days a year to work for the Board of
Elections. So anybody who wants to, call your congressman, call your
United States senator, and encourage the federal tax code to eliminate the...
It's a specific tax on poll workers, and it doesn't need to be there.
It's probably costing us more money than it's making us.
I appreciate the time. I probably went over time.
I just wanted us, on behalf of the board, we wanted to tell you a lot of things
that are current and active.
As you know, our Executive Director, Sandra Spera, has open phone lines.
I do myself. Always happy to work on any
issues with you to make elections even better in Illinois.
Same with my colleagues to the left.
Great. Thank you all. We very much appreciate your presentations.
We'll open it up now to questions, first from committee members and then
non-committee members. Any questions?
Alderman Vasquez to start.
Thank you, Chairman, and I really do appreciate all of the great ideas that were
presented.
So I think I'll just go right into questions.
So for the mobile voting, the
data-driven access, I guess I got a question.
When we're talking about folks
that don't have as much access as others,
what kind of touched me thinking about it is the city election.
So if we're looking at it through different lenses, there'd be different ways to
look at the criteria. So if you're looking at citywide, there are parts of town
that have less access. But if you look at a ward level, there are neighborhoods and
communities that have less access.
So how would those two kind of play against each other, right?
So for example, you got wards that are on the north side where you could imagine
largely privileged, white, more affluent folks
have more access. I know Nick loves this.
More access to the polls than others wouldn't, but there's communities that
wouldn't. So how would you determine that, or how would you
propose to make a decision on that?
I think that the determination would come from the Fair Access to Democracy
Council,
in conjunction with the Board of Elections.
They would determine
the scope of
what that accessibility looks like across the city.
I think that at least in terms of what we are talking about is reaching
predominantly young voters, unhoused voters, and voters
with disabilities. So people that generally just have less access
to polling locations. But it does raise a fair question that I think is
something that the Fair Access Democracy Council will have to work on.
Yeah. I would real quickly, another criteria is language access, which we see as a
problem across the board. So I think similarly to kind of think through what those
variables would be. But yeah.
Absolutely.
Sorry.
Well, I just can quickly address both issues.
First of all, the Board of Elections, we have in the past few years implemented a
much higher quality mapping system, GIS mapping system.
We actually have
some maps here today. We can really specify and find out where people are voting.
Like a registered voter from here goes to this early voting site.
There's a lot of data we can look at to help figure it out.
When our early voting precincts were first put out, one per ward,
that's understandable. But as we increase these sites, I think it needs to be
focused more on where they're needed as compared to just how many are in each ward.
For language access, I want to point out that the vote centers and early voting
sites, the universal voting allows for every single language ballot to be
available. So with the van, we would be able to provide every single
language ballot that we produce, which is I think like is it 13 or 15 languages.
The actual language judges or officials would be the trickier thing because
it's a recruitment effort. But we would certainly welcome
input, as we already do from community groups, to help us recruit the
language judges.
Yeah, I think similarly, once you determine which locations you're going to go,
it's almost promoting to different communities to know that the vehicle will be in
such places.
Yes.
So I think there's a lot of mechanics that would need to be kind of sorted out.
But that being said, I think it's absolutely commendable
and
I really do appreciate thinking through the shelters being a place,
because there's tons of folks who would love to vote, and clearly
survival is a priority, but being able to offer that opportunity is just
commendable, so thank you on that.
For ranked-choice voting, one, I'm a huge proponent.
I brought this up, I think, in
multiple budget hearings. Just for the amount of cost savings alone, I think it's
worth it. I think the amount of
media people are inundated with during the runoff is
crazy. And so I think maybe I'll ask
a question out loud that I imagine most of us would probably ask you
behind closed doors to get clarity.
Is there data on how incumbents fare when it comes to ranked-choice voting?
Because I think that's ultimately the question for the people voting on this thing.
That's what they want to know. So if there's any information that can be shared
about how incumbents fare related to ranked choice, I think many of us on the
progressive side, and I'll say as one of the Democratic socialists, watching New
York, we get jealous as hell. So being able to find out, that would be helpful.
Yeah, I can speak to that.
On the back of the handout that I
gave out in advance, there's actually a chart with some data studying
incumbency rates with versus without ranked-choice voting elections.
And we consistently find that ranked-choice voting doesn't really
change
the incumbency win rate with elections.
So it tends to remain about the same as plurality elections.
One of the things that Fair Vote took a look at in that study was how many
candidates run in the election and how that changes things, not just
ranked-choice voting. And it actually ended up being the case that the amount of
candidates running in the election tends to vary it more than ranked-choice voting
itself. So RCV doesn't actually really affect
the incumbency rate.
Yeah, I appreciate that. I think probably the job you're doing might affect the
success of the incumbency rate, right?
But I think
just to game it out for people who aren't wonky and looking at the numbers, right?
If you're a voter, maybe the incumbent's not your number one, but they still might
be your number two or number three because you're like, "Hey, this new idea seems
like something I'm interested in.
But if that's not my first choice, I think I know that this person does a
pretty solid job, even though I'm not as excited because they're not the newest
thing on the market." Right? For lack of a better term.
Is that kind of how the logic goes?
That's right. Yeah. It gives you the opportunity to vote for exactly who you want
to vote for. And as you said, it encourages everyone,
including incumbents, to run a more positive race and reach out to try and
earn those second and third choice votes.
And so it's a better experience for voters and candidates alike.
Yeah, I think
you rightly point that out as well.
You're less likely to take shots at everybody else if you think you can be
somebody's number two or number three by not doing so.
So I think it really helps elevate the culture and
context related to running for these races.
So I think there's a lot of added benefit.
So yeah, a huge proponent. For Mr. Lasker,
nothing's going to stop me from rapping. I'm going to 32nd Ward next.
Actually, we're going to do it for free.
So,
the election judge list,
right?
Yeah.
I'm just going to say something, because it's 2026.
That seems like a spreadsheet data pull, not something to count on committee people
to provide. Is that something that just could be done for folks who are
basically signing up to do the job?
I don't know exactly what you mean by a spreadsheet data pull.
We're getting it done on our own. Statutorily,
that's not the way it's supposed to work.
Got it. So we're talking what would be language cleanup,
perhaps. Because I guess in talking while you were kind
of phrasing it, I was unfamiliar as not being a committee person,
that's something that's required of the committee people to do.
The fact that it wasn't being met is my understanding.
Am I wrong on that? You said 2% of the numbers being provided by the committee
people.
Yeah.
So if that's something where the data is already there, but the committee
people aren't delivering it, is that just a language cleanup?
Well, it's for the state legislature and
frankly, the political parties to decide.
Do the political parties on a statewide basis want to give up their
authority to provide the lists of election judges?
I can't answer that, where I'm from-
Yeah
... a nonpartisan, bipartisan agency.
Totally.
But
we have a lot of returning judges. We have a lot of really good election judges who
have done this for a long time. But there's a lot of fluidity in it as well.
Some people do it once, and some people turn 18 and want to give it a try.
Yeah.
And people in the city of Chicago, they come and go.
We get lots of people from outside of the city who move here and settle here.
And so
that's where the recruitment comes in.
And the statutory design is that in the
cities, it's your ward committee persons.
In the suburbs, it's your township committee persons.
They're people of the community. They have a better understanding, a better
ability to reach out to those new people.
Yeah, we're always working off our same list for next time.
Yeah.
We reach out to all of them. Most of them say, "Yeah, I'll do it again." Some of
them don't.
Got it. No, like I said, I appreciate the context.
It just-
Yeah
... I'll just say some of it seems pretty old school listening to it.
So I think that's where my mind was at, where I'm like, if the data's there, if
anything as a committee person, you might not know every single person who applies.
I imagine you would or should.
Yeah.
But the data's there to be able to recruit and build up more engagement.
So I understand.
Yeah. And like I said, we've got 160-something events on the calendar where we're
recruiting judges and so we're doing it.
And we certainly use the data that we've got on prior judges.
Sure.
They all get invited back.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then a last question I've got is through the chair for you as well.
One, I appreciate the laundry list of ideas. I'll start there.
But I think for us, a chart would be helpful of all
the different ideas and how different cities are utilizing those
ideas or not. And I'd say that across the board to see where we measure up
with other cities that are either comparable or not, related to all the different
ideas being presented here. Because I don't- I'm always very
competitive, so I like to see where everybody else is at and see where we stack up
in a way that allows us to work towards certain things that we might be able to
meet or exceed.
Yeah.
And so if you could send through the chair, and I guess I'd say that for
everybody here, how we stack up compared to other comparable
cities.
Yeah.
And even smaller cities, right? Some of the things are logistic, but I think just
knowing what's out there, what's possible, what people are doing, helps us identify
where we want to take on work to move it forward.
Because clearly, all of y'all are invested, as I
think the public
can be and should be. And I think us knowing that would allow us to help have those
conversations more with our communities to get that kind of buy-in and help add
momentum. Because I think different communities have different demographics and
different interests. So being able to know where we're at and what needs to move
would be helpful to us. So thank you again.
Absolutely.
And thank you very much, Chairman Martin, for raising all this up.
I think it's something we should all be talking about. Thank you.
And
Mr. Chair, may I add one thing-
Of course
... to the laundry list? Because this was something that-
Nice
... was not on my original outline, but
listening to this committee today with Alderman Knutson's proposal
to prohibit the use involving the prediction markets.
I just want you to know that this past spring, the Board of Election commissioners
adopted its own resolution to prohibit all poll workers from
gambling, including prediction markets, on the outcome of elections.
Nice.
Not from gambling in general, but from gambling on the outcome of elections.
Some states, not many, some states already have that in their state election codes.
We do not in Illinois. That's another thing we would champion, of course, because
we've adopted our own resolution to prohibit our own poll workers from doing that.
I appreciate that. Thank you for that.
Great. Thank you. Alderman Lawson.
Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of quick questions.
For
sort of everyone but the Board of Elections,
do we need the state
to allow us to implement any of these reforms?
I think with ranked-choice voting,
some suburbs have done this
by referendum, right?
Yep. So three suburbs have done it by referendum.
They haven't actually implemented yet.
Right.
There's ongoing litigation for our friends at Reform for Illinois to work that out
if it's already legal. So frankly, there's some uncertainty-
Okay
... around that at this point.
Okay. Oak Park, Evanston, and-
Skokie
...
Skokie. Mobile voting, do we need any change in state law to allow that?
There may be a chance that we have to.
So we have talked to some state legislators to see, and some
have agreed to maybe take this up if there are some technical changes that need to
happen. So we're still-
All right
... kind of researching that right now.
I have a very high turnout ward, where people wait a very long
time to vote. And sometimes on election day, you have a precinct pop up where
there's two judges that should be five, and that line is three times longer than
the one literally right next to it.
I could see this as a way to help ameliorate those lines on election day.
You could even troubleshoot at those polling places that are
seeing unexpected
day of turnout, because, right, my ward has been voting remotely or by
mail, or early, in greater numbers.
And I appreciate the data that you give us.
Each precinct, we get sort of a pie chart that we can look at as our whole ward as
to who's early, who's mail, and who's on election day.
I have a lot of people who move. A quarter of my ward moves every
year. So I have really high
November presidential turnout numbers because everyone's
registering on the same day. So I love it.
I had four precincts over 100%, and I made some of my colleagues very jealous.
But the registrations also take longer and can create more lines, too.
Exactly. And so that's something I can see.
We try and get people in early, but even in an early voting site, they're changing
their registration and updating it.
And capacity in early voting, we've talked about.
I appreciate the board's help on that.
On the dark money, I assume we need the state
in order to... Or we can do that on our own?
No. This should be squarely within home rule authority.
Okay.
The city has other campaign finance regulations that are specific to the city.
Good.
And then it seems
so simple to allow every polling place to be a drop spot, but I know that
it would require another safe box to drop things in, right?
Because it's not the same polling.
If I go in and vote, it's a different box than if I'm dropping something.
But it happens all the time. Everybody goes to their local polling place, and then
they've got to go someplace else a mile away.
We could do that on our own, I'm sure.
I think so. I think under existing
state law, it just requires it to be going into a
secure lockbox.
Right.
And
we think the
Chicago board has equipment that could satisfy that now,
but
I'm not
here as a lawyer.
Neither am I.
Okay.
So great. I'm not a lawyer, so it's probably a good thing.
But there may be a cost, and I think every member of this
panel is keenly aware of the timing on petition
turn-in this year, because it's so different from four years ago.
And what we run up against sort of timing-wise,
I really appreciate you bringing up that there's a real cost to that, that there's
a space cost to that.
And I don't know that
city objections are as lengthy as state objections or statewide.
There just could be many... They're longer? Sorry. Go ahead.
Our busiest electoral board cycle by far is the municipal cycle-
Yeah
... both in the number of cases, but also
473 is a pretty decent
signature requirement-
Sure
... for the alderpersons, but then 12,500 signature requirement
for mayoral candidates. And we had 14 who made it to the ballot last time,
19 the year before that.
So yeah.
Fair. It's a bigger field. One of my colleagues had nine opponents, right?
Yeah.
Nobody wants that.
Yeah.
Well, you're welcome, I guess. We're
helping to fill that up. But it is a problem.
It's something that we're going to have to solve for
I think that's really it. Oh, on the ranked-choice voting, has anyone done any
modeling of the 2023 Chicago mayoral election to
see if the outcome might have been different, or in what ways?
And
I'm not sure,
has anyone done it or looked at it in that way?
I have not seen any modeling. We have cost analyses, but I haven't-
All right
... seen any actual... It's tricky to say.
Ranked-choice voting collects more data than a plurality election, so-
Right
... with plurality vote records, we just simply don't have the data to
know if voters had been able to rank their choices, what might they have voted
as their second choice.
Sure. Sure. Because I think we're probably in an era where we're going to have a
mayoral runoff more often than we did.
Because when there was no mayoral and there were only a handful of alders in the
runoff, the numbers plummeted. Even in those wards
that might have had a hot race, the turnout wasn't there at all.
So I think there's real value, whether it is mayoral or not, in saving money on the
back end
for that. I think that's it on my questions.
Thank you all for being here and the important work you're all doing.
Appreciate it.
Great.
Thank you. Alderman Lee.
Thanks, Chair, and thank you all for all of your presentations today.
I think there are lots of really worthy ideas to consider and appreciate
all the work that you put in. I just have the one question for ranked-choice
voting.
Do you have
data on when
municipalities have changed over to ranked-choice voting, what the impact was to
voter turnout overall?
So yes, and Minneapolis adopted ranked-choice voting
around 2009, 2008. Since then, they actually have
reached their highest ever historic turnout in the last 50 years.
So we have seen an increase in voter engagement in cities that have adopted
ranked-choice voting. The effect in some other cities, I would say,
for turnout, it has been either neutral, a neutral effect, about the
same, or it's gone up.
Great. I imagine that, I know that
there's probably a lot of people who, in a primary and a
runoff situation, will not vote in the primary and wait
till other people have decided for them to see who's going to make the runoff, and
then just choose between the two instead of having to choose between seven or 19,
whatever the number is. That was my only question. Thank you.
Everybody else has asked really great questions.
Thank you. Alderman Vegas.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry I got here a little late, missed some of the
presentation, but I'll be that nerd and go look at the video.
But my question, well, first of all, thank you for all the hard work that you're
doing in order to promote democracy and get more people engaged.
We definitely want to see more people engaged because I had saw an interesting
fact where, especially on the federal level, where 90%
of races for Congress are not
contested. The primary is the actual race,
and the 10% of the races are really the ones that are contested.
So,
we need to educate people around primaries and all that voting
stuff. So I appreciate the work that you do.
My question is for the Board of
Election. So I actually introduced a resolution
asking Springfield to take a look at putting us on
that November ballot, so that I think we can get more participation.
Two things. Have you done an analysis what that percentage
increase of participation might be?
And then second, what would be the savings for having
that election coincide with the presidential or governor,
whichever one is decided by Springfield?
The proposals I've heard to put it on a November ballot would have it in an odd
year November ballot, not on the same ballot as the
presidential and other elections, keeping the municipal
elections split.
You want to consider how long our ballots already are in the general election in
Chicago,
and how long it takes people to fill them out.
So
if you're going to combine them like that,
there's going to be,
I would say, every voter's average time in the polling booth is going to increase
somewhat substantially, because now you've got some really big top of the
ticket
elections merged. Everybody cares a lot about president,
and people care a lot about mayor and their individual alderman, and now you're
putting that all together. So, that's going to be an issue.
We have not done cost analysis on changing to November.
Like I said, that was brought up in a committee hearing
I attended in Springfield.
And just so I'm
clear, the conversations that happened in Springfield were not to
consolidate the municipal elections with the general elections for president or
governor, it was just to have it in November in an odd year?
Correct. Or at least not in the winter.
Some proposals were to move it in sometime in the summer, others said to November.
The other major cities also keep their municipal elections separate.
So that was kind of the idea, was
that they floated, was to have us a little bit more in line with other major cities
throughout the country.
Got you. Okay, so there wouldn't be a cost savings because we're
not eliminating an election. Actually, it may be a cost increase because it would
be more people
that may be participating, given that it's not February.
We set up for the full party no matter how many people show up.
Got you.
So,
the cost savings-
Oh, okay. I get it
... don't really matter on turnout.
Okay.
We prepare the same.
But with this current overlap that I talked about, because of changing the filing
periods,
additional space is a cost and potentially additional
temporary workers. We always hire temporary workers for an election, but
now there's literally two elections going on at once.
Yeah
So those are some of the cost savings that we would see by moving it.
Okay, cool.
Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Alder.
Thank you.
Few final questions on my end, sticking
with our board representative. And if any of this is through the chair,
that's fine, if you don't know off the top of your head.
Okay.
First, I was wondering how many vote by mail ballots we
received this past election day
that weren't processed this year due to postmark
rule changes at the federal level.
Excuse me. I'm going to turn around and look to our manager, Clint Herd, of
that department.
Do you know the number of late ballots?
That's what you mean, late ballots that came in after the 14 days?
Is that-
That's right.
So we don't have the number on us. There
is a cutoff date where we stop counting,
because at some point it's like none of them are coming in, and then every once in
a while, one trickles in. We'll get you that number through the chair.
Great. And then with regard to ranked choice voting, have you put an
approximate dollar amount on how much it would cost the city of Chicago to
adopt that if we passed enabling legislation at
the city, state level, or if there was a referendum?
We have not done a specific cost analysis.
Neither has the state, to our knowledge.
The state's floated a bill to have the last presidential primary be done through
ranked choice, and the Board of Elections has taken an official
neutral position as to whether or not to start ranked choice voting.
However, that's with the caveat that there needs to be adequate funding for
education of voters, education of the election
judges, and also the implementation of the
computer system to process these results.
My understanding is the results come in slower because there's a lot of data
that needs to be crunched by a computer.
We might not have the same kind of election night results come up.
We might have to wait a day or two,
and we might need
more powerful computing for that.
So those are some of the topics that might be included in the funding.
But otherwise,
those
education costs, if we're talking to do it in the local elections to
then eliminate the runoff, and we're eliminating a $19
million election, then I do believe that that would be a cost savings overall.
When you're talking about doing it in the general election cycle, when there's
still going to be a primary end of November,
that's just an added cost.
Okay. Moving on to Ms. Mims. I was
hoping you could shed some light on DuPage County, if you know, and
if the league needs to share this information through the chair, that's fine as
well. I was wondering if, to your knowledge, DuPage County
saw any notable increase in ballots that were returned at
drop-off boxes on election day.
No, sir. I do not, but we can get that information to you.
That would be great. And apologies if you mentioned this earlier and I missed it,
but how did this specific policy proposal get on the league's radar?
Did you see what DuPage was looking at, and you thought about potentially adopting
something similar for Cook County?
Actually, it was because I was an election judge and turning people
away because they wanted to drop their vote by mail ballot,
and also saw that as a poll watcher, and that's what
influenced me. And then, of course, there was also the Supreme
Court case in Watson that was challenging whether or not there would
even be a grace period after election day to receive, and that
really moved it up on the priority list.
Understood. Thank you.
Ms. Kaplan, I was curious
what you see might be needed by way of implementation
if the dark money proposal you outlined were to be adopted in the
city.
I gave the state version of this
bill to the Chicago Board of Elections to review, and they believe the
main
changes would be to their IT systems, because they have to
adapt the forms. They have to create some new forms to collect this
information.
It's a new rule. Obviously, there would be some new enforcement,
much like enforcement of existing campaign finance rules,
but at least the Board of Elections did not believe that it would be
beyond their capability. They liked the bill very much, actually.
What?
No, the Chicago Board of Ethics. Ethics. Sorry. Yeah.
Oh, okay. Yeah, because they already monitor the contractor
limits.
Oh, sorry, if I said the Board of Elections, that is not what I meant.
Okay.
Board of Ethics.
Noted.
Yeah.
I appreciate it.
Glad I had someone to catch me there, yeah.
And then lastly, for our two representatives from
Chicago Votes, I very much appreciated the presentation. It was quite helpful.
I was curious if you have any insights in terms of Los Angeles and
Seattle or the associated counties,
how they fared with their process.
If they saw a significant
increase in the number of people who were served, maybe how many vans even were
used over a period of time. Just some of those
more specific detailed lessons learned that we could take into account as we
consider this.
Thank you for that question. I will say there wasn't a lot of publicly available
data that they had. A lot of the research and journalism that I saw
around it really focused on how it helped with disabled communities and
homeless communities.
But that is some research we can try to look up and then try to find and get to
you.
I think that would be very interesting to know how they
modeled this, if they scaled it up or if it's been particularly flat over a period
of time. So thank you in advance for sharing that.
Those are all my questions for right now.
So I
believe there is no further business before the committee.
Alderwoman Lee moves to adjourn. All those in favor signify by saying "aye."
All those opposed. In the opinion of the Chair, the ayes have it.
The meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much to our panelists.
We appreciate your time.