Jason Lee, a top adviser to Mayor Brandon Johnson, voted in Texas last month despite a rule requiring city employees to live in Chicago.
Records obtained by the Tribune show Lee cast his ballot for the November 2024 presidential election in person on Election Day in Houston, where his voter registration address was listed and where one document indicates he told Texas election officials he lived. But he has also served as Johnson’s senior adviser since the mayoral transition in May 2023 and signed an affidavit that month attesting that Chicago is his permanent home.
Mayor Brandon Johnson says top adviser voting in Texas is ‘personal matter’
Lee hasn’t been charged with wrongdoing, but the optics of a government leader who is required by law to live in one city voting in another are questionable.
In a phone interview, Lee said he wanted to vote for his sister, Erica Lee Carter, in a special election to complete the unfinished congressional term of their late mother, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died of pancreatic cancer in July. He said he is allowed to vote in Texas even though he lives in Chicago.
“I voted in Texas last month because I wanted to vote for my sister,” Lee told the Tribune. “My mother has been a U.S. representative for my entire life, and I made a commitment to her that I would vote in my home district. I didn’t vote anywhere else. My parents’ home is where my registration card was, and I never changed it. But my residency is in Chicago.”
Carter prevailed in November’s special election and will complete her mother’s final two months before the general election winner, former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, assumes the permanent role next year.
In his interview with the Tribune, Lee denied that he misled either Chicago or Texas officials on his residency.
“Honestly, do you know what ‘time’ is?” Lee said when asked how he was able to vote in Texas last month if he lives in Chicago. “If I live in Chicago now, it doesn’t mean that I lived there then. … A lot of people are registered in their hometown, even if they’re living somewhere else.”
(After this story published online, Lee called a reporter to argue he was referring to voting in Texas in 2020 when he asked, “Honestly, do you know what ‘time’ is?“)
Asked when he officially moved to Chicago, Lee said “it’s been 100% true since the day I started working with the city” on May 15, 2023. He said he rents an apartment in the Loop and pays utilities and taxes in Chicago.
“Being registered in a city and living in a city aren’t the two same things,” Lee said. “You don’t have to be registered to vote to live in a city. And on May 15, (2023,) I had residency in Chicago, and I’ve been a resident.”
Voters are typically required to vote in the state where they live, although there are exceptions for certain groups like college students and Americans living abroad. The Texas election code says “‘residence’ means domicile, that is, one’s home and fixed place of habitation to which one intends to return after any temporary absence.”
Lee has no voting history in Chicago except in the March 2020 primary, according to public records released by the Chicago Board of Elections. Records from the Harris County, Texas, clerk show Lee voted in Texas later that November, and that in the Nov. 5 election this year he voted at Thompson Elementary School in Houston.
His voting information from last month indicates that Lee gave confirmation to the poll worker that he still lives in Texas, though Lee told the Tribune he does not recall such a conversation. The Texas secretary of state’s electronic pollbook standards guide for poll workers states that “after determining that the voter is registered, the voter must be asked if the residence address on the list of registered voters has changed.”
Lee’s November record says “TRUE” underneath a column labeled “IsPhotoIDAcceptable,” which the Harris County clerk’s deputy director of elections compliance, Du-Ha Kim Nguyen, told the Tribune in an email means that a voter provided one of the seven acceptable forms of ID.
His document then lists “TRUE” when asked “IsVoterResponseForAddress,” a designation that Nguyen in her statement to the Tribune wrote “means that the voter answered ‘YES’ when the poll worker asked if he still lives at that registered address.” It also says “FALSE” under “IsSORProvided,” a label Nguyen said entails whether a “Statement of Residence” updating the voter’s address was filed.
But Lee’s May 14, 2023, Chicago government affidavit attesting that he lives in the city says that “an opinion of the Corporation Counsel states in part: ‘actual residence has been found to contemplate substantially the same attributes as are intended when the word ‘domicile’ is used, and a permanent or fixed character is intended.’” The Illinois Supreme Court has also ruled that a residence is a “true, permanent home” and “principal residence (and) domicile” when upholding Chicago’s residency requirement.
“I don’t know what they asked me. I don’t recall what they asked. It doesn’t matter what they asked me,” Lee said when presented with his Texas voting record from November. “You think that every single interaction at a polling location goes exactly by what they mark?”
Lee also did not vote in Chicago’s 2023 municipal election despite running Johnson’s mayoral campaign, Board of Elections records show. Asked why not, Lee said, “I didn’t commit voter fraud by voting in a city I wasn’t registered in.” He said he was traveling “back and forth” between Chicago and Texas during Johnson’s campaign but spent most of his time in Chicago.
Before working for Johnson, Lee’s jobs included serving as political director for United Working Families, a political organization closely allied with the Chicago Teachers Union; the Illinois Black Voter Project in 2018; and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s 2019 mayoral campaign.
As for the future of Lee’s Texas voter registration, he said, “No, I don’t plan to maintain it. I wanted to vote for my sister one final time.”
“I kept my registration because I wanted to vote for my mother, and then I wanted to vote for my sister. I live in Chicago, and anybody who has any sense knows I live in Chicago, because they see me every day,” Lee said. “I want to pass a budget so the people of Chicago can continue their services and everything and their public safe — and everything else they need. That’s what I’m gonna be focused on. In Chicago.”
Bob Heath, an elections attorney in Texas, said if Lee’s registration were to be challenged in the courts, he would need to reasonably prove he intends to return to Houston and that “his presence in Chicago is temporary.”
Lee, in a follow-up call to the Tribune, said he never intended to leave Texas permanently, but that he doesn’t have “any current plan” to move back.
Lee has been a top adviser to Johnson for years and an occasional source of controversy for the administration. As senior adviser, Lee has been far more visible than comparable staffers and consultants under recent mayors and has frequently done on-the-record media interviews. Some City Hall holdovers from previous administrations refer to him as “Mayor Lee” due to the large influence he has over city plans, a nickname he has rebutted as disrespectful to voters who cast their ballots for Johnson.
Just this week, Johnson shouted out Lee during a City Club appearance, encouraging people who “have a better plan” than taxpayer subsidies for a Bears stadium to “see my senior adviser, Jason Lee.”
Lee’s mother, Jackson Lee, ran for mayor of Houston last year and received $51,500 from Chicago city contractors, lobbyists and politicians between an August fundraiser and her loss in the December runoff.
Lee has also clashed publicly with an alderman. In fall 2023, Lee tied the removal of a homeless encampment to whether downtown Ald. Bill Conway would agree to vote for two hallmarks of Johnson’s progressive policy platform, which the alderman later said was inappropriate and referred to the inspector general’s office for investigation. Lee acknowledged the conversation but chalked it up to normal political deal-making.
In another incident, former deputy director of digital strategy Dora Meza complained to city and state officials that, two days after Johnson was inaugurated, Lee walked into a press aide’s office and began yelling, according to a complaint she filed with the state’s human rights department and the city inspector general.
Lee was upset with the digital team, made up of people hired during the Lori Lightfoot administration who had stayed on after Johnson took office, for not posting a photo recap of Johnson’s appearance at the NBA Draft Combine to the mayor’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages, according to the complaint Meza filed. Meza said she told Lee they were holding off on posting content because they were livestreaming the funeral for slain police Officer Aréanah Preston.
During the interaction, Lee “constantly hovered over” Meza as she sat at her desk, “raised his voice, used profane language, rolled his eyes, and kept holding his head in his hands,” according to the complaint. A colleague, Azhley Rodriguez, said she was present. Lee has denied the “alleged incident.” Lee said he recalls “the details differently, both in terms of the reason for the discussion and the characterization of my actions” and characterized it as a “one-time engagement” that was “only minutes long.”
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