By Mary Wisniewski and Fiona Ortiz
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois state prosecutors are investigating robocalls that targeted Chicago election workers, causing voting snafus that have led Democratic Governor Pat Quinn to refuse to concede he lost his race to wealthy Republican businessman Bruce Rauner.
State's Attorney Anita Alvarez has launched a criminal investigation, her office said on Wednesday.
Rauner leads Quinn by 157,000 votes with nearly all precincts counted, or 51 percent to 47 percent, and the hand-counting of mail-in ballots and those cast provisionally by last-minute registrants cannot erase the deficit, experts said.
Automated phone calls that caused some 2,000 election workers not to show up on Tuesday were a new twist in a city with a long history of corruption and the unofficial cynical motto of "vote early and often."
Polling stations in and around Chicago also had delays as they tested out a new system allowing voters to register on election day. Lines were so long at some stations that the last votes were cast in Chicago hours after Rauner declared victory.
Quinn's spokeswoman said on Wednesday he would not concede until every vote was counted.
"He's entitled to wait as long as he wants. There were enough new wrinkles in the election process yesterday to warrant a go-slow process by a candidate if he chooses," said Andy Shaw, executive director of the Better Government Association, a non-partisan watchdog group.
"But having said that, the margin appears much too large for any of these final ballots to change the outcome," Shaw said.
The automated calls placed over the weekend falsely told Chicago election workers they were not qualified to serve as judges at polling stations.
"Even for Illinois, this seems very strange, disrupting the process without any clear sense of what impact it was going to have," said Kent Redfield, emeritus professor of political science at University of Illinois Springfield.
The Sun Times reported the calls may have targeted Republican election judges, who in heavily Democratic Chicago are often actually Democrats who agree to represent the Republicans at polling stations on election day, for a paycheck.
Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Wednesday.
Republican and Democratic party officials told Reuters their parties were not behind the calls.
(Editing by Jim Loney)