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Fraud or incompetence? Chicago voting numbers don't add up.
The Chicago GOP has accused the Chicago Board of Elections of counting thousands more votes than there are registered voters in the city. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Fraud or incompetence? Chicago voting numbers don't add up.

The integrity of the ballots cast in Chicago during the 2016 election has been called into question by the chairman of the Chicago GOP, and now the Chicago Board of Elections has until Sept. 8 to prove the accuracy of the vote counts.

After filing an open records request back in January, Chris Cleveland of the Chicago GOP received data from the board that showed a discrepancy of 14,000-16,000 of the number of votes cast versus the number of registered voters.

“This is either massive fraud or massive incompetence, but we have no way of telling the difference because they won’t give us the data," Cleveland said.

The board contends that updated information actually reveals that the 2016 vote count is the most accurate the city has ever had. They have not yet provided that information to the Chicago GOP, however.

Board spokesman Jim Allen told Fox News the difference between the January numbers and the current numbers is a result of paper applications that had not yet been processed. The city currently uses an electronic system that was implemented in 2014.

“We’ve had to go back and go through paper applications every election cycle since then, and the paper applications have filled in the gap every time,” Allen said.

Cleveland isn't buying Allen's defense, however, accusing the board of "general incompetence."

"At the moment they gave me the data, they thought it was correct, and that was three months after the election," Cleveland said. "It wasn’t until I pointed it out to them that they realized ‘we’ve got a problem.’”

The board has until Sept. 8 to respond to the Chicago GOP's latest open records request, at which point we'll find out what the real story is on Chicago's vote count.

“We need to know what the nature of this problem is,” Cleveland said. “People in the precincts just don’t follow the rules, and they add up. That will turn an election very easily.”

Hillary Clinton won 83.7% of Chicago's vote in November, taking all but 51 of Chicago's 2,069 precincts.

(H/T Fox News)

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