The Illinois State Board of Elections has been paying off-duty Springfield police officers to provide security for records examinations, including the validation of candidate petitions.
Andrew Finko is a lawyer for Byron Sigcho-Lopez, a Chicago alderman who is suing the State Board of Elections in an attempt to get onto the November ballot for Illinois’ open 4th Congressional District seat as an independent candidate. Finko told Illinois Times in early July that campaign watchers for Sigcho-Lopez noticed armed Springfield Police Department officers in the records examination room.
Finko, who has attended records examinations, said he thought it was unusual for police to be present for the typically uneventful process of having an elections officer cross-reference petition signatures with voter registration information.
“It’s not a confrontational process. It’s not a hearing. It’s not anything that normally would require any level of security, so it is very unusual,” he said. “Chicago’s (elections office) used to have a police officer sitting in its lobby, and the guy was just basically getting paid to sit there.”
The ISBE is headquartered at 2329 S. MacArthur Blvd., in the Town & Country Shopping Center. Upon hearing about police officers at the state’s Springfield elections office, Finko submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the ISBE and SPD.
“I submitted two FOIAs; the first FOIA was a general one because I didn’t know a whole lot about what was going on… (SPD) said there was nothing and the State Board showed me some police records. I took information from that production and I incorporated it into a second FOIA to the city of Springfield,” Finko said. “That one similarly had no responsive documents.”
But there are relevant documents within the Springfield Police Department, as the State Board of Elections FOIA shows.
Nikki Monari, the communications liaison with the Springfield Police Department, did not respond to a voicemail from IT requesting clarification on the FOIA response.
The taxpayer-funded ISBE paid nine off-duty SPD officers a total of $4,095 – a rate of $70 per hour – for less than 60 hours of providing security to the state agency from June 9 to 17, documents from the Board of Elections show.
Bernadette Matthews, who has served as executive director of ISBE since 2022, informed Illinois Times the state agency has been utilizing some means of police security for at least a decade. In the past, it was mostly officers from Illinois State Police and the Department of Homeland Security, but the state agency began contracting with SPD in 2025.
Matthews said DHS stopped offering support after the 2024 election cycle.
“As threats against both public officials and election officials have increased significantly in recent years, security has been requested to address these concerns. While the agency is not aware of specific threats in recent months, the Springfield office received a suspicious package containing white powder in 2024,” she wrote in response to an inquiry from Illinois Times. “Following this incident, and in response to the current threat environment, the agency has increased security over the last two years. This includes requesting law enforcement and/or a security presence when hosting public events.
“ISP continues to also assist with security when requested. DHS has not assisted since the 2024 election cycle as the agency has not offered this form of support in recent years,” Matthews wrote.
David Amerson, executive director for the Police Benevolent Labor Committee, said the practice of businesses hiring off-duty police is common. He said some cities even mandate it.
“That’s extremely common across the state,” Amerson said. “Secondary employment is generally considered a pretty good benefit to the community. First off, businesses get actual skilled security guards and police presence,” which he said retailers tend to prefer. “When these guys would otherwise be at home, instead you have a police presence that’s privately funded, so to speak.”
Ron Michaelson, former executive director of the ISBE for nearly 30 years until 2003, told Illinois Times he had never contracted out security work.
“I was director for 29 years and we never had to do that,” Michaelson said.
He said the only times ISBE would request a police presence was to keep an orderly line when candidate filing opened. Michaelson said police officers were also used during the 1982 gubernatorial race to protect casted ballots, also known as the canvass, while the board verified results. That race came down to fewer than 5,100 votes, making it the closest race for governor in Illinois history.
“I don’t even have any recollection if we paid the one single policeman who would stand at the end of the petition filing line on that first day,” Michaelson said. “It just might have been a courtesy intergovernmental cooperation, but at any rate, that was really never an issue.”
This article appears in August 13-19, 2026.
