ago requires COVID-19 vaccinations for election workers during early voting //

Chicago will require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to vote workers at early voting sites. However, this move will not affect poll watchers on Election Day, according to the city’s elections board.

Carol Davis, chair of the Illinois Conservative Union, stated that the requirement is “contradictory and arbitrary” and “downright silly”.

Davis said that rumors are circulating and that she doesn’t want election judges or poll watchers to mistakenly believe that they must show proof of vaccination in order to work Election Day.

Davis stated that for the first time in decades, there is a concerted effort to achieve balance at our polls. He said that he didn’t want to see it disrupted. “We have created countywide task forces which are crucial because if there’s an election incident, it is often at the county-level.”

Chicago allows early voting for 40 days before Nov. 8, the day of Election Day. This is a substantial amount of voting that isn’t subject to independent monitors at 52 locations.

election judges in Illinois are paid to manage precinct voting places and assist voters. They also open and close polling places and complete reports after the polls close. A poll observer is a legal credentialed person who monitors voting to ensure that election law and procedures are being followed.

Chicago and Cook County are known for their voting and corruption scandals. These jurisdictions were considered to be determinative when Democrat John F. Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election.

“This goes back the Chicago machine as far as I am concerned,” Davis said. He is also the state director for the Election Protection Initiative at FreedomWorks. FreedomWorks is a conservative advocacy organization. “It is built in to the law to give advantage to the Left.”

The National Bureau of Economic Research released a study last month that seems to support the long-held belief that vaccine hesitancy tends to be more prevalent on the Left than on the Right.

The study showed that Republican-leaning countries had a higher “excess death rate” from COVID-19 (meaning more than the expected death toll relative the pre-pandemic baseline) than Democrat-leaning areas. This was despite the fact that three vaccines had been approved. This disparity existed before the vaccines were widely available.

Max Bever, director of public Information for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, stated that there are no requirements for vaccinations or masks for Chicago poll watchers, election judges, and election coordinators on Election Day.

Bever stated in an email to The Daily Signal that part-time applicants for the board must be fully vaccinated and a resident of Chicago.

He wrote that early voting officials help voters at Chicago’s early voting sites by: checking voters into e-pollbooks; issuing voter cards for use in voting touchscreens or the ballot printer and [helping] voters register to vote.

Bever stated that early voting officials were hired by contractors through the elections board. Applicants must follow board policy, which requires them to be vaccinated against COVID-19. He said that early voting officials are paid $17 an hour and are contracted for approximately two weeks.

The Illinois Review first reported the matter.

Janine Small, Pfizer Inc.’s president of international markets, stated last week that the pharmaceutical company did not know whether its COVID-19 vaccine would stop viral transmission before it was brought to market. This revelation cast doubt on the necessity of “vaccine passports” or other mandates in European countries.

Hans von Spakovsky, manager, Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation (parent organization of The Daily Signal), stated that “this is clearly a useless and unneeded requirement.” “Whether the government has legal authority to demand it, I would believe, is also a matter for dispute.”

Von Spakovsky said, “Given that election officials across the country are always having trouble finding enough workers to support their election campaigns, I think that a requirement such as that seems extremely foolish.”

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