CHICAGO (AP) – A Democrat locked in a tight primary race for the chance to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert looked to absentee ballots Wednesday as a possible way to close a few-hundred vote gap with his rival.

John Laesch's campaign gathered the absentee information one day after an initial vote tally showed the carpenter trailing businessman Bill Foster by 323 votes with all 568 precincts reporting in the district, which stretches west of Chicago to almost the Mississippi River.

Foster had 42.4 percent of the vote to Laesch's 42 percent.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Laesch had not conceded to Foster in the general primary, which will determine who faces GOP businessman Jim Oberweis this fall in a contest to replace Hastert beginning next January.

"We want the resolution more than anyone," said Allan Nowakowski, spokesman for the Laesch campaign, which scheduled a Friday news conference.

Absentee ballots postmarked no later than Feb. 4 and received by Feb. 19 get counted, said Ken Menzel, an election specialist at the Illinois State Board of Elections.

The number of outstanding Democratic absentee ballots ranged from none to a couple dozen to more than 100 among the counties in the 14th District, according to election officials.

Laesch has conceded that Democratic voters on Tuesday picked Foster as their nominee to run in a March special election against Oberweis to fill the rest of Hastert's current term. Hastert's early retirement from Congress last year forced the special elections to fill his seat.

Foster's camp said it considered him the winner in both primaries even as Laesch's camp continued studying results.

It will be several weeks before local and state election authorities finalize official results.

This is Laesch's second shot at the job after Hastert easily defeated him in 2006.

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