Mayoral challenger Willie Wilson calls for citywide polling to encourage minority voting, ‘won’t go there’ when asked about past Trump support

Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson called on the Illinois General Assembly Friday to improve the city’s voter access, particularly for Black and Latino residents, after what he said was dismal turnout in their communities during this month’s general election.

Wilson, a business owner who has recently been known for his free gas and grocery giveaways, said the Nov. 8 election left him concerned that a recent change in polling locations led to primarily South and West Side wards seeing the lowest voter turnout. He said he will send a letter to Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other Springfield leaders demanding they pass legislation allowing Chicagoans to vote at any polling location.

“This is not political for me right here,” Wilson said in a news conference. He evoked his history of being the son of a sharecropper in Louisiana and said, “Of course, down South in the Jim Crow days, we weren’t allowed to vote, and so this is personal to me. ... We must keep it going because a lot of people died for people like me and others to have a right to vote.”

Ahead of the Nov. 8 election, Chicago election officials cut voting precincts by nearly 40% following a state law that raised the number of voters allowed per precinct, as more people are casting their ballots early or via mail. That led to new polling places for most Chicago voters, though the total number of locations wasn’t significantly reduced.

Wilson said his push for opening up each polling location to all would alleviate some of the barriers hindering residents from voting. But he also acknowledged a previous lawsuit he filed against the Chicago Board of Elections to halt the new precincts had faltered, with his lawyers filing a voluntary motion for dismissal earlier this month.

“That didn’t work out like we would have hoped for it to work out to be, but we did all we knew to do,” Wilson said. “And so now is another page.”

A wealthy business owner who has contributed more than $5 million to his campaign fund, Wilson is making his third bid for Chicago mayor. In previous runs, he’s done well with older Black voters. After he lost in the first round of voting in 2019, Wilson backed now-Mayor Lori Lightfoot against Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, helping her soundly defeat Preckwinkle.

This time Wilson is among a large field of announced candidates, including state Rep. Kambium “Kam” Buckner, community activist Ja’Mal Green, former CPS CEO Paul Vallas, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García and Aldermen Raymond Lopez, Roderick Sawyer and Sophia King. Candidate petition filing begins Monday.

In recent weeks Wilson has sought to angle himself as a crusader for voting rights and access, and his latest call entails pressuring Springfield to allow Chicagoans to vote at any polling site before the Feb. 28 local election ballots go out. The Chicago City Council does not have the authority to change guidelines surrounding polling site regulations, as they are part of the state election code.

Board of Elections spokesman Max Bever said the body is “not opposed” to a system where Chicagoans would cast ballots at any polling site, but it would likely mean the entire city’s voting program would switch to touchscreens.

As for voter turnout in this month’s general election, all but one of the 10 lowest-turnout wards were indeed on the South, Southwest and West sides, where most of the city’s Black and Latino communities reside. Those turnout percentages ranged from the mid-20s to low 30s, election data show.

But total vote counts don’t finalize until Nov. 29, and there are still over 10,000 mail-in ballots to process. The 2022 elections also saw low voter turnout in general, with the citywide percentage landing at 44.3% this November and at 22.8% in the June 28 primary election, which was organized under the previous ward map’s precincts that Wilson sought to keep.

In additional, provisional ballots, which can be a sign of how many voters showed up to the wrong polling site but still cast a ballot, dropped from 9,759 in the 2018 general election to 6,192 this year.

“It’s perhaps a little surprising that in a once-in-a-decade redistricting year we actually have less (provisional ballots) this time than the 2018 General Election,” Bever wrote, although he noted that could also be due to lower 2022 turnout numbers in general.

Wilson’s calls for elections reform came the same week Lightfoot’s campaign attacked him for his previous support of former Republican President Donald Trump, who announced Tuesday that he is running for another term in 2024. Wilson has said he voted for Trump in 2016.

“As Donald Trump announced a 2024 campaign for president, Chicagoans are left wondering if Willie Wilson will be a strong supporter of Donald Trump once again,” Lightfoot campaign spokesperson Christina Freundlich wrote in a statement Thursday. “While Mayor Lightfoot has spent the last few years standing up to Donald Trump, Chicagoans deserve to know if Willie Wilson will continue his long record of supporting Trump and his campaign for the next two years.”

On Friday, Wilson responded to a question on where he stood on the former president — who is deeply unpopular among Chicago voters — by dismissing it as unrelated to the municipal election.

“Let’s put it this way: I’m running for — when is the presidential election?” Wilson asked reporters, who answered “2024.” He continued: “I’m running for mayor of the city of Chicago. I will not allow myself to go in that area.”

Wilson also attacked Lightfoot’s record on crime and COVID-19 restrictions Friday: “Mayor Lightfoot is a joke. … She has failed the whole community. It’s a joke. How can you talk about the president situation when all the people dying?

“I won’t go there,” Wilson concluded. “You ask me do I love Mr. President Trump or you ask me do I love President Joe Biden? I love them all. And I’ll work to do whatever’s going to benefit for the people.”

ayin@chicagotribune.com