CHICAGO (CBS) — If you live in Cook County or another big county in Illinois, and planned to register and vote on Election Day, your options just shrank.
A federal judge has now decided that a law that allowed people in the state’s biggest counties to register at polling places on Election Day will not be allowed this Election Day.
The reasoning: that the smaller counties aren’t treated fairly under that law.
“That question can be taken up, and it’s a legitimate debate that people ought to have, but let’s do it after this election,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois. “This system was in place in 2014 as a pilot program, and it was in place during the primaries, and thousands of people came out and registered and voted on the day of the election. We ought to simply leave it in place and then debate whether or not it’s appropriate.”
Cook County Clerk David Orr said in a statement that the lawsuit that resulted in the ruling “was a thinly-veiled partisan effort by the right-wing Illinois Policy Institute to disenfranchise voters.”
A spokesman for Orr said some registration will still be allowed on Election Day for same-day voting, but locations have not been decided yet.
