The Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate race in November is being contested by a number of defeated candidates.
Mundelein’s Kathy Salvi was declared the winner of the 7-person race, taking a shade over 30% of the little over 705,000 votes cast in Tuesday’s primary. Salvi defeated hear next closest challenger, Belleville’s Peggy Hubbard, by about 37,000 votes. Salvi will move on to face incumbent Tammy Duckworth in November.
5th place finisher Bobby Piton posted a chart to his Twitter account on Thursday evening denoting the number of votes at displayed time after polls closed on Tuesday evening. Piton noted that Salvi’s vote totals jumped significantly an hour and fifteen minutes after polls closed. He sarcastically tweeted: “Nothing to see, this looks normal…” before saying he had spoken with fellow Republican challengers Hubbard, Jimmy Lee Tillman III, and Matt Dubiel saying that “on the surface it appears to be a rigged…race.”
Piton went on to say that he was going to call for audit of the race. As of yesterday afternoon, Piton was seeking donations to pay for the audit. Hubbard later posted a Facebook Live video saying that she believed the election was stolen from her. Hubbard is also fundraising to pay for an audit.
Both Piton and Hubbard have refused to concede the race to Salvi. There have been no comments from the Salvi campaign or the Illinois State Board of Elections about these statements by Piton and Hubbard at this time.