By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – State lawmakers Wednesday got their hearing into the “automatic voter registration” problem which led to more than 500 non-citizen drivers having their information sent to election authorities.

“There was no effort put forth to hide anything or to cook the books, so to speak,” Secretary of State Jesse White told lawmakers. “This was an error,” he said, one which was corrected the day it was discovered in December.

White’s senior legal advisor, Nathan Maddox, says the problem was one line of code left out of the “automatic voter registration” program.

While lawmakers could not bring themselves to beat up on White, State Rep. Keith Wheeler (R-Oswego) sounded dissatisfied with what he was hearing from the secretary of state’s and election board’s staffs.

“If we are going to have confidence in the system,” said Wheeler, “we have got to have a better understanding of what testing is being done, how it is being done, how often it is being done, and, to the end of it, a third party will have to verify things now, because, to me, this is one of the most obvious things we should have been testing for.”

Ultimately, the number of ineligible people who actually voted because of the mistake is at least one and no more than eight. But, Maddox said, one is one too many.

Illinois’ primary election day is March 17.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].