This text was adapted from a January 21, 2022 member bulletin  from Allyson E. Haut, Ph.D. President, League of Women Voters of Illinois.

House Bill 1871 

• Allows election authorities to let a citizen who is temporarily or permanently disabled vote from their car on election day, monitored by two election judges.
• Provides funding for secure collection sites (drop boxes) for postage-free vote by mail ballots.
• Allows for the acceptance of vote by mail ballots that lack postage.

Senate Bill 825

• Declares Election Day, November 8, 2022 to be a state and school holiday.
• Allows voters to apply for permanent vote by mail status, eliminating the need to apply for a ballot every election. The election authority must notify qualified voters no less than 45 days before the election of the option for permanent vote by mail status.
• Requires each election authority to open a vote center on election day at either the election authority site or in their largest municipality; voters can use either the vote center or their precinct polling site to vote. (Expires 1/1/2023)
• Requires election authorities to implement cybersecurity measures, including biennial risk assessments and monthly vulnerability scans.
• Requires high schools to provide voter registration information to students. 
• Requires high schools to allow nonpartisan voter registration activities on site. 
• Allows sheriffs to establish temporary polling places in county jails so those who have not been convicted of a crime can vote based upon their residence address.
• Allows those who have been banned from running for office due to conviction for certain crimes to petition the governor for restoration of that right.
• Prevents a local government from requiring that a member of the General Assembly resign from office before running for a local office.

A recent report by WCIA’s Capitol Bureau Chief, Mark Maxwell, covers a new website reputed to spread misinformation and funded by an Illinois GOP megadonor. You can see the 5:19 minute video on their YouTube site or view it below (embedded with permission). The story featured comments by Karen Fresco, LWVCC's chair of the Misinformation Task Force 

LWVCC participated in a story by Ethan Simmons of the News-Gazette on the upcoming primary and general election.  The full article is on the News-Gazette online site and includes comments from LWVCC Voter Ready co-chairs Karen Fresco and Ann Prisland. 

Some key points from the article:

• Candidates for the elections may be coming to your door soon, seeking signature for petitions to run.
• This year many offices are up for election due to the census and redistricting.
• January 14-17, to participate in the MLK Weekend of Service, LWVCC is collaborating with student and local organizations in a virtual voter registration drive.
• Vote-by-mail information including the new permanent vote-by-mail list and information on registering.
• Information from Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons about polling places, drop boxes and the importance of voting.

Check out the News Gazette site  to get the details.

(KF)

A desciption of the report is available on the Carter Center's news release site.   Or you can view or download the full 69 page report. 

On October 6, the Carter Center published “The Big Lie and Big Tech,” a new report that details the role played by “repeat offenders”—media known to repeatedly publish false and misleading information—in spreading election fraud narratives in online echo chambers during the 2020 election.

The Carter Center report found that while myriad forces—politicians, influencers, hyper-partisan media, and citizens—coalesced to advance The Big Lie, known repeat offenders provided critical connective tissue in the spread of misinformation on social media. They often inserted out-of-context information into broader narrative frames, helping to amplify misinformation faster than it could be fact-checked.

See more on this topic on our Misinformation about Elections page.

(KF)

On October 6, 2021 Professor Mira Sotirovic, Karin and  Folke Dovring Scholar in Propaganda in the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois, presented "Lies and Consequences: How Journalism Can Be Saved in the Age of Misinformation."  

From the CAC abstract: The torrent of false information and efforts to undermine the credibility of journalism and the news media as democratic institutions make journalistic commitments to accurate reporting more crucial and more challenging than ever before. The standard practice of debunking misinformation might be more effective if accompanied with forging new relationships with audiences based on shared values, transparency and consistency. All news is biased to some extent, and journalism would serve the public better by openly examining those biases rather than denying them.

Here's a flyer with more information on the presentation and the Center's series of conversations on similar topics. 

(KF)