Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III are running for the Democratic nomination in the race for Cook County state’s attorney. (Photos provided)

The lead held by retired judge Eileen O’Neill Burke continued to shrink Monday in the close Democratic race to replace Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, as Chicago election officials counted a total of 2,746 mail-in ballots and Cook County officials counted approximately 3,500 mail and provisional ballots under intense pressure.

O’Neill Burke now has a lead of 1,643 votes, according to the Associated Press tabulation as of Monday evening. Since March 19, opponent Clayton Harris III has closed more than 83% of the gap that existed on election night, as election officials in Chicago and suburban Cook County counted ballots.

In all, 522,127 ballots have been counted in the contest, according to vote totals from the Associated Press.

Six days after the March 19 election, the contest remains a long way from being settled, with 53,768 outstanding mail-in ballots from Chicago and approximately 36,000 outstanding ballots from suburban Cook County that will be counted as long as they were postmarked or dropped off on Election Day and arrive by April 2.

Chicago officials expect to count approximately 300 ballots on Tuesday, officials said.

Neither candidate has conceded or declared victory, nor has the Associated Press called the race.

The race was jolted late Saturday by the news that there were approximately 9,100 more ballots cast by Chicagoans to count than elected officials had identified in statements to the news media on Friday, leading to unfounded charges of irregularities that both campaigns sought to reject.

Chicago elections officials acknowledged Monday morning that they had also misstated the number of provisional ballots cast by voters on Election Day. Those ballots must undergo an additional layer of scrutiny before being counted. In most cases, provisional ballots are cast by those who requested a mail-in ballot but decided to vote in person for any reason.

There were 1,991 provisional ballots cast in the March 19 election, 891 fewer than originally reported, because of a logging error, according to Max Bever of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

Foxx, who has served as state’s attorney since 2016, opted not to run for a third term, setting off a fierce contest for the Democratic nomination for state’s attorney.

O’Neill Burke — a former circuit and appellate level judge, who also served as both an assistant state’s attorney and defense attorney — is running as a tough-on-crime candidate, which she believes is a necessary response to Foxx’s emphasis on reforming the criminal justice system.

O’Neill Burke, of Edison Park, pledged to reduce the threshold for felony shoplifting prosecutions. Under Foxx, the value of stolen goods must be worth at least $1,000 or a defendant must have 10 prior convictions before that person can be charged with a shoplifting felony. O’Neill Burke said she’d lower that total to $300, as defined by state law.

Harris, an attorney and lecturer at the University of Chicago who lives in Washington Park, is the progressive pick in the race. He has received endorsements from the Cook County Democratic Party, County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and the Chicago Teachers Union.

He vowed to prioritize preventing violent crimes and to work with federal agencies to go after gun traffickers. He said he would create a new division within the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office to focus on organized crime in order to prosecute those responsible for widespread carjackings and retail theft.

Unlike O’Neill Burke, Harris said he would maintain the current $1,000 threshold for felony retail theft prosecutions.

Despite their differences on retail theft prosecutions, the two candidates shared similar views on other issues, including supporting the elimination of cash bail and sharing a belief that the state’s attorney’s office must repair its relationship with law enforcement.

Both candidates also said police officers who are members of known hate or extremist groups or who have faced numerous misconduct charges should be barred from testifying in criminal cases.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]

A Safer City is supported, in part, by the Sue Ling Gin Foundation Initiative for Reducing Violence in Chicago.