CHICAGO — Your voting ballot is no place for a punchline, the city's Board of Election Commissioners warned one wise-cracking Chicago voter during Tuesday's election.
Twitter user @charlescubfan Tweeted a snapshot of the City Clerk section of Tuesday's municipal election ballot at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners Tuesday afternoon with a familiar name as a write-in candidate. (For the record, Da Coach is not running a campaign for the job.)
But the Twitter account manned by staff from the Board of Election Commissioners didn't find the joke all that funny. Their tweet warned @charlescubfan that "it's illegal to take a photo of your ballot."
"Just a heads-up; might want to retract this..."
Illinois state law backs that up: in the section addressing "unlawful observation of voting," the statute explains that "any person who knowingly marks his ballot or casts his vote on a voting machine or voting device so that it can be observed by another person...shall be guilty of a Class 4 felony."
That charge carries a possible sentence of one to three years in prison.
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