“The Election Code does not permit the use of a signature from a mail in ballot application to validate any mail-in ballot signature,” DuPage County Judge James D. Orel wrote in his order. “Use of the Vote by Mail ballot application to qualify signatures on the Vote by Mail ballot itself would be an obvious way to commit ballot fraud.”

“The House Republican Caucus is focused on helping Illinois families by offering common sense solutions to the many problems our state faces,” she said in a statement. “We will be a unified force that will grow our party by sticking to our core values and ending the corruption that has pervaded state government.”

Arguments will be heard Dec. 7 in Kankakee County in a lawsuit filed by 58 Illinois counties regarding the legality of the SAFE-T Act. “This bill needs to be addressed, it needs to be reworked, it needs to be done in a way that involves the people that do this on a daily basis that have to deal with victims,” Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis said.

Six members have been added by the governor since as early as May this year; There are still three vacancies on the 15-member board. The most recent audit of the PRB found a variety of issues with the agency, including lax oversight over state property and contractual services.

A separate bill that advanced out of the Illinois House last year by majority Democrats would relax penalties for the possession of certain illicit drugs, including fentanyl. The measure has stalled in the Senate.

Illinois would double the size of its $1 billion rainy day fund and further pay down a federal unemployment insurance loan and other debt under proposals laid out by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to tap healthier-than-expected revenues. The latest fiscal picture came Monday in the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget Annual Economic and Fiscal Policy Report, which provides a view of the current fiscal year, projections for the next five years, and the governor’s policy objectives.

Said state Sen. Jason Plummer, “We have an infrastructure problem here in Illinois regardless of the election cycle, regardless of names that people like to talk about. The fact of the matter is what we’ve done in Illinois Republican politics would be the equivalent of sending the Chicago Cubs out on the field without bats or gloves.”

Called the “Champaign County Guaranteed Income Project,” researchers have $74,858 in university money to make the mission a reality. If the program proves successful, investigators hope local institutions could pool money to sustain a guaranteed-income program far into the future.