Will County Gazette

Illinois state Rep. Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) has a simple credo when it comes to preserving the integrity of the vote.

“I think it should be easy for people to vote, but hard for people to cheat,” Batinick told the Will County Gazette. “Unfortunately, Democrats only seem concerned with the first part of the equation.”

As the latest example, Batinick points to the brewing scandal where at least 574 non-citizens were mistakenly registered to vote through the Automatic Voters Registration (AVR) program overseen by the Secretary of State’s office that registers individuals whenever they receive an Illinois driver’s license or state ID card. Of that that number, the Illinois Board of Elections has reported that at least 19 of those individuals actually cast ballots in the 2018 elections.

“Our elections are kind of the basis of our whole democracy and I just really think we should be more careful about how we protect them,” Batinick said. “I definitely favor voter ID and would like to see a plan that will work to maintain that integrity.”

Batinck has joined the growing list of GOP lawmakers calling for a full investigation into the AVR program to determine how the breach occurred.

“As of right now, I don’t necessarily think there was fraud or anything untoward involved,” he said. “I just think maybe it was more negligence or ineptitude. In any event, we need to know what happened and why. Who knows, there may be a bunch more we haven’t found out in terms of the actual numbers. This whole system seems to be done on the honor system and when you’re talking about something as important as voting, I just don’t know if that’s always the best way to do things.”