Champaign County Clerk Says Nearly 150 Voters in 2008 Didn’t Live At Stated Address

Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden is urging voters to act with integrity after discovering nearly 150 people in the county voted illegally in the fall 2008.

He says there is no good way of checking as to whether some of these voters moved within Champaign County and should have filled out a federal-only ballot, or if they left the county entirely. Shelden's office discovered more than 600 pieces of mail sent to voters in 2008 that were returned as undeliverable.

After some research, it was determined that 146 of them provided a different address when registering than the one they lived at on November 2nd. Shelden contends a lot of these people probably didn't think much about listing the wrong address - but adds that kind of thing could affect an outcome of a race.

"When one group of people plays by the rules and doesn't get to vote on the school sales tax referendum and another group of people doesn't play by the rules and gets to vote on things they shouldn't be able to vote on - that's wrong." said Shelden. "In our society, we know virtually everyone is a law breaker in some fashion... they jaywalk, or they speed a little bit... everyone's got their own level of what they consider a law that they're not willing to violate versus laws that they're willing to violate."

Champaign County's sales tax referendum passed last year. But the totals were close when the item failed in 2008. Shelden says while illegal votes probably aren't a high priority for law enforcement, he has turned information on those 146 residents over to the FBI.

Shelden has written about his office's research in his blog, linked to below.