EXTRA: People still voting when Quinn refused to concede defeat

I didn’t know it at the time late Tuesday, but there were people still waiting to cast ballots for the state, federal and county government elections at the very moment that Pat Quinn refused to concede defeat to likely Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner.

Quinn made what I’m sure he thinks is a high-minded statement about how he wants every single vote counted before he makes any statement about his political future.

I’M ALSO SURE that Rauner backers are already starting up the cheap rhetoric of Quinn being a “sore loser” because he won’t admit defeat. Even though I’m sure that cocky statement Rauner made late Tuesday to declare victory was written months in advance with no option possible if a few more city votes had been cast to put Quinn over the top.

There were polling places where problems arose early in the day, causing judges to order them to remain open late. For most, 7:30 p.m. was the closing time, although some were open as late as 9 p.m.

And that merely means somebody had to be in line by the time the polling place closed.

The Chicago Tribune reported about some city polling places where officials weren’t capable of working through the backlog of would-be voters until about 3 a.m. Wednesday.

THERE LITERALLY WERE people casting their votes about 8 hours after the polls were officially supposed to be closed. Or about three-and-a-half hours after Rauner said he was DA WINNER!!!

Of course, because the voters were given the option of registering on Tuesday to vote Tuesday, there will be many of those late votes that will be regarded as “provisional.”

Which means some sort of investigation will take place in coming days to ensure that the voters are legitimate and that their ballots should be included.

Which also means that some of the votes yet to be counted will wind up being excluded from the final vote tally – which will not be known until the Illinois State Board of Elections certifies the results on Dec. 5.

I’M REALISTIC ENOUGH to know it is not likely that Quinn can make up enough of his vote-deficit to win himself a second term in office.

But I’m also not going to get too worked up over Quinn’s lack of a concession statement last night. Because the only people who lose out are those ideologues whose victory isn’t complete unless they get the sight of someone groveling before them!

We all need to move on, and those people need to figure out  how to govern without offending the sensibilities of the true masses of our society.

  -30-