State Representative Charlie Meier

State Representative Charlie Meier (R-Okawville) is calling on the Office of Illinois Secretary of State (SOS) to suspend the Automatic Voter Registration program given the fact that 545 non-citizens were registered to vote in Illinois during a 17-month period.

“The right to vote is for American citizens only, this is the law,” said Rep. Meier. “The fact that nearly 600 non-citizens were registered to vote is a serious mistake which needs to be addressed. This is exactly what myself and many other colleagues were concerned about when the automatic voter registration bill was signed into law. I am told the issue has been corrected by SOS, but I think more work needs to be done to ensure this mistake does not happen again which is why I support a temporary halt to the Automatic Voter Registration program.”

The Automatic Voter Registration “program error” became public following a recently disclosed December 18, 2019 letter from the Secretary of State’s office to the Illinois State Board of Elections that voter registration information of 545 self-identified non-citizens was forwarded to the Board of Elections. That registration was in-turn forwarded to local election authorities for finalization of the voter registration process.

With absentee voting set to begin on February 6, Rep. Meier and his Republican colleagues are demanding accountability and immediate action to preserve the integrity of our elections and want to learn more about what went wrong and how to fix it. Following calls by Meier and his colleagues in the House, a legislative hearing to discuss the Automatic Voter Registration program is scheduled on Thursday, January 30^th at the State Capitol. Rep. Meier added, “Something needs to change, only in Illinois do we have non-citizens ‘mistakenly’ being registered to vote while law-abiding gun owners have to wait months to obtain their FOID card. We need to get our priorities straight and follow the Constitution. Our law-abiding citizens deserve better.”