The closely watched race for Cook County State's Attorney between retired judge Eileen O'Neill Burke and University of Chicago lecturer Clayton Harris remains too close to call as officials from the city of Chicago and Cook County continue to process mail-in ballots.
According to election officials, updated totals showed O'Neill Burke with 259,445 votes and 50.20% of ballots cast compared to Harris' 257,430 votes and 49.80%. A total of 3,500 mail-in ballots still had yet to be counted - 2,500 in the city and 1,000 in suburban Cook County, officials said.
Saturday, O'Neill Burke held a greater edge over Harris, with an additional 4,771 votes. At that point, O'Neill was up 50.47% - with 255,010 votes - compared to Harris' 49.5% and 250,239 votes.
A Chicago Board of Elections spokesperson provided an update on vote-by-mail processing efforts Sunday evening, saying 13,107 more votes had been added to the unofficial count throughout the day. As a result, the number of ballots cast rose to 382,097, equaling a 25.31% turnout citywide.
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Questions have arisen during the counting process amid changing numbers of outstanding and included ballots. In a news release, a spokesperson for the CBOE explained that while adding up vote-by-mail ballots, he accidentally left out additional ballots that had been delivered by the U.S. Postal Service on Monday.
The spokesperson said that a total of 7,009 ballots had been received back via the U.S. Postal Service on Monday ahead of Election Day. Another 9,143 ballots should have been included in that number, officials said.
According to the Chicago Board of Elections, all properly postmarked ballots have a two-week grace period to arrive.
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"Per Illinois election code, all late-arriving but properly postmarked (by March 19th) vote-by-mail ballots have a two-week period to be counted – and that would bring us to April 2nd," CBOE director of public information Max Bever said.
Who are the two candidates running?
The race for which Democrat will appear on the November ticket for Cook County State's Attorney has been a closely watched one, with both O'Neill Burke and Harris looking to replace incumbent Kim Foxx, who is not running for a third term.
Clayton Harris is a law school lecturer at the University of Chicago and a former Cook County state’s attorney. Eileen O’Neill Burke is also a former prosecutor, as well as a criminal defense attorney then an appellate court judge.
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Both approached the Cook County Democratic Party and Board President Toni Preckwinkle for the party backing and her endorsement, which ultimately went to Harris.
Former Ald. Bob Fioretti, who had launched a run for State’s Attorney in 2020, was the lone Republican on the ballot in this year’s election. He will also be joined on the ballot by Andrew Charles Kopinski, who will represent the Libertarian party in November.
