State Sen. Sam McCann (C-Plainview), whose union support for his gubernatorial bid has rankled Gov. Bruce Rauner, collected over a quarter million more from union sources on Thursday, while Republicans and Democrats reported their own cash pulls as November 6 draws nearer.

Two topics jumped out from the malaise of argument in Wednesday evening’s ABC-7 gubernatorial debate: Gov. Bruce Rauner’s and JB Pritzker’s answers on campaign finance and revelations of sexual harassment in the Capitol.

Illinois is in the middle of the pack when it comes to both voter registration and voter turnout, but there’s growing evidence that vote by mail programs could boost both of those stats.

While approximately 8 percent of voters in Cook County voted by mail in 2016, that dynamic is reversed in Denver, 7 seven percent of voters cast their ballots in person and the rest of voters drop off their ballots at the mailbox or at secure repositories around the city.

That gives Colorado the fourth-highest voter turnout rate in the nation — and the highest  highest voter registration rate, said former Colorado-based election official Amber McReynolds, currently of the National Vote at Home Institute.

Speaking at an event Tuesday held by Reform for Illinois Tuesday, Reynolds said Colorado’s model is “very much about convenience.”

But beyond convenience and increased voter participation, Reynolds said pushing for a larger vote by mail system would actually make elections more secure.

“By spreading it out over a longer period of time and getting away from the Election Day sprint that we’re sort of used to in our politics and making it more of an election season, people have more options,” McReynolds said. “Administrators — we’re mitigating and separating risk as well. When you have everything intensely focused on one day, that’s a lot of risk.”

Illinois residents have long had the option of voting by mail, and have multiple routes in which to do so. The State Board of Elections, for example, requires voters to send an application for a mail-in ballot by Nov. 1. But campaigns have capitalized on the opportunity too.

Democrat JB Pritzker’s campaign, for example, has sent out two vote by mail applications to likely Democratic voters, which are addressed to the voters’ local election authority. Some campaigns also send out ballots with their candidate’s bubble already filled in, which only requires a voter’s signature. While these are legal, the some past iterations of these ballots have raised eyebrows, in both their presentation to voters and the return addresses to campaign headquarters, and not any official authority.

Noah Praetz of the Cook County Board of Elections told The Daily Line voting by mail requires a “shift in voter behavior.”

“From a cybersecurity standpoint, [voting by mail is] great,” Praetz said, noting that mailed applications are checked via phone calls to households and FBI-caliber signature verification.

“We’ve got a couple servers and some vote counting machines and they’re highly protected,” Praetz said. “Those we’ve got full control over. In local elections, vote by mail’s a place we watch really closely. We watch it closely in large elections too as well, but the incidence of bad behavior’s much less. We’d be watching this significantly in an odd year.”

Chicago voters are increasingly taking up the offer to vote by mail, said Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections. Allen said that currently, the Chicago Board of Elections has received more than 65,000 applications to vote by mail.

“To put that in perspective, at this point in the 2016 presidential election, when we were on our way to a modern record, we had only 18,000,” Allen said. “We’ve already more than tripled that and we’re hoping to break our record from World War II of 116,000 when we had people deployed all over the planet.”

Allen is enthusiastic about the push for voting by mail, citing research that says voting by mail increases voter turnouts “at all age levels, especially among millennials.”

However, Allen warned that he and other election administrators shouldn’t make major shifts without considering vulnerable populations.

“The key concern we would have in terms of a largely vote by mail…program would be addressing homeless voters,” Allen said. “We’d have to make sure they’re able to receive and have an education program that’s effective and reaching out to the homeless community so they have a place that they can receive the ballot by mail, and/or some kind of alternative.”

One vulnerable population that may benefit from an increased push to vote by mail is people with disabilities.

Cheryl Jansen with Chicago-based Equip for Equality said voting is a “constant issue” for those with disabilities for many reasons, including a lack of affordable and accessible transportation.

“Although there are federal laws and state laws that are designed to protect and make sure that people with disabilities indeed have full and equal access to the electoral process, they continue to face barriers,” Jansen said.

Voting by mail is the only method available for inmates in Illinois’ county jails outside of Cook County.

Gov. Bruce Rauner in August amendatory vetoed HB 4469, which would have required voting materials be distributed to those in custody of county jails, though he left alone the part that stipulated counties with a population of more than 3 million people — which is to say, Cook County — should set up a temporary branch polling place. Other counties’ jails will be required to facilitate mail-in voting.”

There is a small but vocal group that is opposed to expanding vote by mail access without extended study of possible voter disenfranchisement.

Lora Chamberlain, president of Clean Count Cook County, told The Daily Line she worries about politically motivated poll workers manipulating vote by mail applications.

“Vote by mail itself if you you incorporate the U.S. [Postal Service] into the whole system opens up a complete new avenue for fraud and disenfranchisement,” she said.

Chamberlain said that her wariness of vote by mail systems began in 2006, when she claimed she witnessed a Republican election judge in Oregon refusing to receive a delivery of mailed ballots after 7 p.m. even though the truck had broken down.

Chamberlain also expressed disappointment over a bill that passed the legislature this spring and that Rauner signed in July. Chamberlain said language requiring risk-limiting audits related to voting by mail, and a clause that would have required campaign-sponsored ballots to only have return addresses to local election authorities were taken out — a move she blamed on House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago).

Nearly 17 months ago, former Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady stood outside of Democratic candidate for governor JB Pritzker’s Gold Coast home, surrounded by blown-up pictures of the luxurious interior of Pritzker’s “uninhabitable” second mansion next door, which looked anything but unlivable.

Six political action committees set up this summer in the name of Asian Americans to support GOP candidates are betting big on a candidate challenging a Democratic stalwart. Meanwhile, Democratic money kept on flowing on Monday after a big-bucks weekend.

Labor won another round in a court battle over local “right to work” zones after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the National Labor Relations Act does not allow for individual municipalities to pass such laws.

The next Illinois Attorney General will have the freedom to set his or her own course — picking and choosing what to make a priority, or how to respond to crises and movements.

Affordable housing may be the next big debate in Springfield in the new year as tensions over gentrification, unrestricted development and changing demographics distill into a movement to lift the state’s ban on rent control.

Attorneys for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District will appear in Cook County court on Wednesday in order to hammer out details on scheduling in a case filed by the water treatment board last week over an appointment made by Gov. Bruce Rauner earlier this year.

The MWRD sued Cook County Clerk David Orr on Friday, seeking a judge’s call on whether or not Rauner appointee David Walsh should be forced to abdicate his seat after the November election, even though his appointment is supposed to run until 2020.

When former Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Tim Bradford died in early December of last year, three days before the filing deadline for primary candidates, Orr’s office consulted with Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and decided that the contest should be decided with a write-in election.

Democrat Cameron Davis and Green Party member Geoffrey Cubbage signed on as candidates for the seat, but there was no Republican in the primary. However, just a few days after Davis garnered a whopping 54,183 write-in votes in the March primary, Rauner appointed Walsh to fill the vacancy left by Bradford.

Orr told The Daily Line Tuesday either Davis or Cubbage should have the ultimate right to the seat.

“It’s always better to let the voters decide an election,” Orr said. “For example, there’s other rules where when somebody dies, usually they might be replaced temporarily, but only until the next election…So we think we don’t need any of this. There was that election, there was a contest for write-in ballots and the individual who got the most votes should have that seat after November.”

Rauner spokeswoman Patty Schuh told The Daily Line that Rauner was just following the law when he appointed Walsh this spring.

“Under Illinois law, the governor had a responsibility to make an appointment,” Schuh said. “He made that appointment. It is an extremely unusual circumstance so [the MWRD is] seeking clarity on the law.”

In its complaint, filed on Friday, the MWRD said the “dispute requires immediate adjudication,” or else two people would have a claim to the $70,000 per year job.

Rauner’s March appointment of Walsh was the third time Rauner tapped Walsh to fill a vacancy on the board. In September 2015, the governor had appointed Walsh to fill the vacancy left after former Commissioner Patrick Daley Thompson was elected 11th Ward alderman.

Walsh left in late 2016, but was tapped again to fill Cynthia Santos’ seat when she moved on to the Illinois Pollution Control Board. But in replacing Bradford, Rauner appointed Walsh to fill the “Bradford Vacancy,” thus creating a vacancy for Santos’ seat, which Rauner filled with former State Rep. Ken Dunkin (D-Chicago.)

Earlier this summer, Rauner asked Dunkin to step down from his post following allegations that the former state representative harassed women while serving in the Illinois House.

Speaking to The Daily Line earlier this month, Davis said the fight over the seat is causing people to lose sight of the bigger picture.

“It’s not just about this latest attempt to grab the seat, but it’s really about our water,” Davis said. “That’s kind of why I ran, it wasn’t to be an elected official, it’s because I’ve worked for more than 30 years in the public interest for water.”

• Prior coverage: Water district sues over governor’s appointment, Water Reclamation District Board scraps vote on Bradford vacancy spat

Architects, preservationists and random passersby gathered outside of the James R. Thompson Center Tuesday, calling for the state of Illinois to declare the building a historical landmark instead of selling it to the highest bidder or tearing it down.



Gov. Bruce Rauner has long advocated for selling the Thompson Center, named after Gov. Jim Thompson and designed by German American architect Helmut Jahn in 1985, commissioned as an office building for state government despite its soaring atrium and unusual color scheme.

But years of deferred maintenance and soaring utility bills have created a headache for state official, and Rauner began floating the idea to sell off the property soon after taking office four years ago.

The FY 2019 state budget relies on $270 million in estimated profits from selling the city-block sized property at Randolph and LaSalle streets in the heart of the Loop, though no plans to do so have materialized.

Ralliers made clever signs and even brought “SOS” letter balloons; the initials stand for Preservation Chicago’s rallying cry, “Save Our Starship.”

Preservation Chicago Executive Director Ward Miller told The Daily Line that Tuesday’s event was the “first step” in raising awareness that the building is in danger, even though the group hasn’t launched a petition or started to raise funds to save the building.

Miller said he hopes the issue gains traction in the governor’s race, but said his group’s efforts to reach the campaign of Democrat JB Pritzker have not been successful.

It is not just the unique building that’s at risk when Rauner and others talk about selling or demolishing the Thompson Center, but pointed to both the outdoor space and the “Monument With Standing Beast” sculpture by French artist Jean Dubuffet in the plaza, Miller said.

“This is a great public space,” Miller said. “These plazas and this sculpture were created first on the Daley Center and then on this site just to open up the Loop to sunlight and air — quality of life issues — make this a culturally rich experience to walk through the Loop, versus a dark canyon of buildings where you only see sunlight at 12 noon.”

Miller led the crowd in chants of “Salmon pink and baby blue, Thompson Center, we love you!” and “Civic center, public space sent to us from outer space!”

Tuesday’s rally attracted several dozen people, including Ron Tevonian, a docent with the Chicago Architecture Foundation, who had made a sign carrying a sign that said “Jahn turns me on.”

Tevonian said he’s not opposed to the state selling the Thompson Center, as long as the next owner plans to restore the building.

“If the governor thinks, ‘I don’t want to put state offices there anymore,’ he has that prerogative,” Tevonian said. “Our issue is the proper use and preservation of the building, which currently doesn’t seem that impressive because it’s $100 million behind in maintenance costs. But if the building can be brought back to its former glory, there’s a variety of ways in which it can be used profitably.”

The state’s treatment of the building has become a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” in that the state allowed the building to become dilapidated, “and then you look at it and say look at that mess,” Tevonian said/

Also on hand for the rally Tuesday was drag performer and Chicago native Shea Couleé, a finalist on season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Couleé danced in the plaza to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” and “Think,” and afterward addressed the crowd.

“We have to get this building landmarked so that we can keep this a part of the public, part of the community so that people can continue to gather here, make wonderful communion between all of us,” Couleé said. “Because if not, this will be privatized and we will not have the freedom to come here and gather the way we do today.”

Past coverage:

• Ald. Reilly: ‘No One Has Come To Talk To Me’ About A New Plan To Replace Thompson Center


• State Budget Relies On $270M From Sale Of Thompson Center — But Mayor’s Office Says No New Proposal On Tap