Mail-In Ballots Set To Decide Winner Of Democratic Cook County State's Attorney Primary

CHICAGO — The contest to become the chief prosecutor of the country's second-largest criminal court system has become among the most competitive of this week's primary elections.

Whoever wins the Democratic Party's nomination to become the Cook County state's attorney will be the odds-on favorite to fill the seat currently held by Kim Foxx in the fall.

Eileen O'Neill Burke, a former judge, has a narrow lead over Clayton Harris III, a longtime government staffer.

As of Friday morning, unofficial results from the Cook County Clerk's Office and the Chicago Board of Elections Commission show less than 8,200 votes separated the pair.

Harris led Burke by about 2.5 percentage points in the city, while Burke had a lead of nearly 8 percentage points among suburban voters.

According to election officials, there are more than 100,000 mail-in ballots that were sent out to Democratic Party voters that have yet to be returned.

By law, they can be counted as long as they are received up to two weeks after election day, as long as they are postmarked on or before that date. This year marked the first presidential primary election since the state established a permanent vote-by-mail system.

Chicago election officials plan to begin scanning and counting vote by mail ballots Friday, and the public will have the first updated unofficial totals from the count by the evening. That means a batch of about 25,000 mail-in ballots that have been received but not yet counted will soon be added to the Chicago total.

The vote-counting schedule was adjusted due to requests from both candidates' campaigns to review the processing and counting of mail-in ballots, according to a statement from the elections board.

"The Board is happy to accommodate these requests and appreciates the public’s patience as Vote By Mail ballot results are updated starting on the evening of Friday, March 22 and moving forward on a rolling basis," it said.

A spokesperson for the suburban election authority said that all of the mail-in ballots received up before Friday were expected to be included in the county clerk's vote count by Thursday evening.

"By next week we'll have a much clearer idea," said Ed Michalowski, deputy clerk of elections.

"As the post office moves mail through their process, as the days goes on, the postmarks are just not going to be there," Michalowski said. "And all the candidates know that, their attorneys know that, so we feel very comfortable that by early next week, we'll have a clearer picture."

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The background of a candidates reflected a contrast between decades of courtroom experience on one hand and management experience in both the public and private sector.

O'Neill Burke worked as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney before becoming a circuit judge in 2008. Her campaign for state's attorney has emphasized a tough-on-crime and included more criticism of the office's present direction.

"If you think things are going fine right now, I'm not your candidate, Mr. Harris is your candidate," O'Neill Burke said at a debate last month. "But if you want a fair, professional and effective state's attorney's office, then I am your candidate."

Harris began his legal career as a Cook County prosecutor before working in various governmental roles, including as chief of staff at the Illinois Department of Transportation and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He was also a lobbyist for Lyft is a lecturer in the University of Chicago's school of public policy.

"I'm running so that we can have a safer and more just society. This is not an 'either-or' proposition, this is an 'and,'" Harris said at the debate. "We can be safe and just at the same time, and how we do that is by holding everyone accountable, appropriately."

Burke had the backing of more wealthy financiers, earning editorial board endorsements and raising about three times as much as Harris, who was endorsed by the Cook County Democratic Party and an extensive list of local, state and federal elected Democrats.

The eventual winner of the Democratic Party's nomination will appear on the ballot Nov. 5 alongside former Chicago Ald. Bob Fioretti, who switched to the Republican Party for this race, and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski, a Norridge-based attorney and accountant.

Read more: Clayton Harris v. Eileen O'Neill Burke In Democratic Primary Race For Cook County State's Attorney