Political parties at a divide over a Senate Bill that makes voting more accessible

ILLINOIS (WIFR) - With a little over a month before the November 8 election, early voting begins in Illinois.

Illinois State Democrats gathered Thursday morning to urge people to vote, highlighting Senate Bill 825, which allows those eligible to permanently vote by mail.

Representative Maurice West sponsored the bill and says it benefits those on both sides of the aisle.

" Even if you don’t plan to vote for my colleagues, we don’t care about that when it comes to this press conference. We want to just make sure you know that voter accessibility has increased, not decreased in the state of Illinois,” he said.

However, the bill received no support from Republicans, with not a single one from the Illinois House or Senate to vote “Yes.” State Senator Dave Syverson was one of those people.

“Why don’t we do things to eliminate any concerns that people have, by making sure that system is pure and protected?,” Syverson said.

Syverson and his fellow republicans want more safeguards in place to ensure people don’t abuse the system.

“Signatures are supposed to be checked when they come in to see if there’s a problem or not, but are all clerk’s offices gonna be mindful in checking those?”

But West and other Democrats say the additional oversight is not needed because voter fraud is so rare.

“When you look at the statistics on what our fraud looks like in Illinois, it’s abysmal, it’s small. And so voting by mail is not corrupt,” West told 23 News.

Election experts from The Heritage Foundation say there have been no cases of voter fraud since 2018. Even though there was a big deal made surrounding voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election so far the claims have been false.

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