A supervisor at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners was fired following last week's high-stakes, high-drama midterm elections.
A Board of Elections spokesman, however, declined to provide insight in the firing.
"It was a personnel issue," said Jim Allen, a Chicago Board of Election representative. Allen said he was not permitted to say why the staffer was fired.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported the firing Thursday night, citing a letter to the board from an attorney for aggrieved Illinois treasurer candidate Tom Cross, the Republican embroiled in a stand-off with Democratic rival Mike Frerichs as votes continue to be counted.
William J. Quinlan's letter, the Sun-Times said, gripes about “numerous irregularities identified by election monitors in the handling of ballots" and states: "In fact, we are informed and believe that at least one employee of the (Chicago Board of Election Commissioners) has been terminated in conjunction with—if not because of—these irregularities."
The lawyer alleges that absentee ballots were erroneously counted and discovered in a closet at the board's headquarters, according to the paper.
Allen said the board "will respond point by point to the credibility, or lack thereof" to Quinlan's complaints and was "busy processing the ballots that were lawfully cast by Chicagoans."
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As of Thursday, just 537 votes separated Cross and Frerichs with the former in the lead, said Illinois Election Data's Scott Kennedy in an update on the hotly contested battle. A week ago, Cross led Frerichs by a close-but-much-wider margin of more than 14,000 votes out of 3.5 million cast.
