After losing the battle at the state Board of Elections, Adamowski sued. He won another recount of the 863 precincts under contention. In that second recount, he fared considerably better than in the first—though still not well enough to win his election. Although this second recount didn't include presidential ballots, Professor Edmund Kallina of the University of Central Florida projected that if Nixon's tally had improved in the second recount as much as Adamowski's did, Nixon too would have fallen shy of victory.

Of course, many of the fraud allegations weren't the sort of thing that a recount could detect. To address other kinds of fraud, Adamowski, as a lame-duck state's attorney, convened grand juries to investigate his own re-election race. After his Democratic successor took over, the matter was turned over to a special state prosecutor, Morris J. Wexler. Wexler returned his report on April 13, 1961. He concluded that irregularities had occurred, but, again, not enough to have influenced any election outcome. He also returned the 677 indictments mentioned above.

There's one final wrinkle. Allegations of vote fraud by Republicans arose across Illinois too. (Outside Chicago, the GOP controlled most districts.) Such charges drew little scrutiny because of Kennedy's victory, but if the Cook County vote had been in danger of reversal, Democrats surely would have mounted challenges downstate to win back votes that may have been stolen in the other direction.