WGN9 in Chicago reported yesterday that hundreds of non-citizens were registered as voters and could have cast ballots illegally in the 2018 election.

The article reports:

In a letter, Secretary of State Jesse White’s office said a “programming error” in a signature pad at driver services facilities led to hundreds of non-U.S. citizens accidentally being registered as voters.

The Secretary of State’s Office said the problem has been fixed Tuesday, but state lawmakers and election authorities are just beginning to raise concerns.

“We view it as a significant problem,” said Matt Dietrich of the Illinois State Board Of Elections.

In 2017, then-governor Bruce Rauner signed the “Automatic Voter Registration” bill into law. It requires eligible Illinois citizens to be automatically registered to vote when they apply for or renew a driver’s license or ID, unless they choose to opt out.

“For whatever reason that technological programming error did not properly remove the individuals,” the letter said. “The individuals who are applying for driver’s license were inadvertently pooled into the automatic voter registration.”

A spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office says the non-citizens who were registered to vote are here legally. They are not undocumented immigrants, and they did not lie on their forms; it was the state error that signed them up to vote.

Chicago does not have a reputation for voter integrity, and this ‘glitch’ does nothing to change that reputation. Voter id laws will not help this problem. This is simply another way elections in America can be compromised.