It is more difficult than that for Dillard. The amount of absentee ballots, according to ABC News, is only in the low thousands:
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/politics&id=7259574&rss=rss-wls-article-7259574
“Election officials in all 102 counties have until February 16 to count the estimated 5,000-10,000 absentee and provisional votes. Most are expected to be Democratic ballots, and remember, the Republican vote will be divided among six candidates.”
So Point #1: In order for Dillard to have any significant gain from the absentee ballots, they must not only go against the trend that Brady and Dillard have received roughly equal votes so far, but they must also trend Dillard in such a manner as to defy statistical probability in a six-way race. Dillard will need to get roughly 5% more vote than Brady just to break even, and that's assuming that NO votes went for any other candidate. The reality is, Dillard is looking at the impossible task of picking up 407 votes with about 8,000 votes to count, a large chunk of which will be Democrat ballots, and the remainder unlikely to just happen to be overwhelmingly for himself at the expense of all of the other candidates.
He won't win that way, period. It will not happen, and everyone knows it.
Point #2: IL recounts are rare because of the burden of proof required to trigger one. In order to get a full recount, Dillard must request a recount. After that request, he STILL does not get a recount because the state requires that a small, partial test recount be done — That means maybe a couple of thousand votes get looked at. In the event that the partial recount shows significant error from the tally, then a judge can order a statewide recount. If the partial recount does not show significant error in counting, then the process stops right there.
There will not be enough error to trigger a recount. I guarantee it. How do I know?:
Peter Fitzgerald won a nail-biter of a Senate race several years back against Carol Mosley Braun. They counted all night in the city of Chicago, and she refused to concede the election. The usual suspects were all out in force demanding recounts: Jesse Jackson, et al. Even with all of their Chicago connections, even with favorable Democrat judges, even with all of the usual shenanigans, they were unable to find significant error with any of the counts — even in COOK COUNTY (which is a major, major FAIL by the Democrats).
The fact is the IL has been ahead of the curve with electronic voting, etc. for some time. We have not had significant voting error in a generation. Instead, our problem has been DEAD voters getting their votes counted........which is not the fault of the machines.
If Jesse and company were unable to find evidence of error to get a full recount, I PROMISE you Dillard won't either.
It's over, Bill Brady has won. The IL GOP knows it, and is already rallying around Brady. Dillard knows it, too - he's just hoping for a miracle that won't come.
When you look at the numbers by county rather than Illinois is a whole, it’s clear Brady won the primary for the same reason Glenn Poshard pulled off a shocking upset in the ’98 RAT primary. Both had been running around third or fourth place in the polls. But on election day the Chicago area vote was split among five candidates, leaving the lone downstater in the race to carry all the downstate counties in the remaining 30% of the state’s population big margins. The primary win had little to do with ideology, but it did result in the interesting side effect of producing our first reliably conservative GOP nominee for Governor in decades. And the best part of that is the RATs are on the ropes right now, so the “accidental” Brady/Plummer ticket appears to be in a very good position to win in the fall.
What worries me is Dillard seems “confident” that he’s “really” only behind by 100 votes. Titan is right that realistically speaking, Dillard would need about 95% of the absentee GOP votes for Governor to be cast for him I in order to erase Brady’s lead. That’s almost impossible to happen in real life, but I don’t discount the possibility of election shenanigans like we had with Al Franken or Chris Gregorie having endless “recounts” until they were ahead. Dillard is a combiner and I don’t trust him. With even Dillard’s biggest booster Jim Edgar saying Brady appears to be the victory, I’m fairly certainly Brady will be the nominee after all the absentees come in.
But I’m not relaxing until Dillard concedes.