The Daily Herald reports yet another Lake County election scandal:
A Chicago woman filed at least 10 fake voter registration cards in Lake County before last fall's election, prosecutors said Monday.
Jeannette Sims, 46, of the 700 block of North Ridgeway Avenue, is charged with mutilation of election materials and faces up to three years in prison.
Sims was working with a voter-registration drive sponsored by the Service Employees International Union when she submitted the falsified cards, said Assistant State's Attorney Christen Bishop.
Read the whole article here.
More:
In the weeks leading up to the election, more than 1,000 suspicious cards had been discovered by employees of the Lake County Clerk's office, which oversees elections and checks such documents for validity. Some were submitted with Lake County addresses that didn't exist, while others were for people who didn't live at the addresses given, County Clerk Willard Helander announced in mid-October.
The discovery prompted a criminal investigation by the county sheriff's office and the state's attorney's office, which found suspicious cards submitted by Sims, Bishop said. Handwriting samples and 10 of those cards were sent to a handwriting expert for analysis in late October, Waller said. After the Nov. 4 election, the expert determined all 10 had been filled out by Sims, and had fake addresses listed, prosecutors said.
Hmm, does anyone notice a pattern here? From Senator Terry Link's and would-be Antioch Township assessor Eugene Kryczka's petition scandals down to fraudulent voter registrations, something must be done to address the apparently systemic voter disenfranchisement issues that are being perpetuated in this county.
Is it fair to blame this all on the Democratic party? Traditionally, Dems must register more voters every cycle just to keep up with the GOP, as voters who tend Democratic also tend to be more transient, which means that the Dems loose more voters and must re-register people as they move. Couple that with now-President Obama's big campaign push to register literally millions of people that had never voted before, and it's no surprise that some people try to cut corners to meet registration goals.
It's all great to get everyone who is eligible to vote involved in the electoral process, but when you have to lie about it, it's the candidates who end up suffering--that is, when the fraud is discovered in time, which it often is not. If not, then it's you the voter who suffers--as a fradulent vote or petition signature often means that your legal vote is nullfied.
Kudos to the fantastic Lake County Clerk Willard Helander and her office for figuring out this scam and reporting it to the State's Attorney's office.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
This scam was one of several which were the basis of the lawsuit filed by the IL GOP with Dan Venturi and myself as two of the named plaintiffs. It's nice to see it reemerge where it should reemerge, as a criminal prosecution, and not a civl proceeding.
Sorry, tampering with the electoral process is a violation of the law and violates the public trust that the election process will be fair and above board.
The standard Democratic argument (none of the fraudulent registrations voted so what is the big deal) doesn't wash.
The founding fathers of this great nation placed the power to vote in our hands. The manipulations of such power by special interest groups working on behalf of the Democratic party (and even those working on behalf of Republicans) need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Most of these abuses occur because these special interest groups pay an amount for each registration obtained (or in the case of petitions for office, for each signature obtained). Perhaps outlawing hired guns in both categories would be a nice start and would return the power to the people who are supposed to have it, the electorate!
Louis G. Atsaves
In Sept. 2007, while I walked a precinct, in North Chicago, to get petition signatures, a lady said that her husband died, "16 years ago." The list that I got, from the county clerk's office, said that he voted in republican primaries, in 1996 & '98.
Phil Collins
Phil Collins - In September 2007, did you report the information you gleaned from your precinct walk? If you believe a person who is reported as dead is voting, it is your responsibility to advise the county clerk's office. According to federal law, we cannot remove a voter (with the exception of death records from our county) without verification from the voter or their family that they died or moved. We audit the voter rolls each year and every household are asked to give us an update of the voters moved from an address. We follow up on all reported moved or deceased voters.
Post a Comment