Terry Link's Knights of the Roundtable

Well, the Waukegan News-Sun has decreed that some of the Terry Link petition circulators engaged in the practice of "roundtabling," which apparently is a scheme where a group of people take old petitions or voter lists to come up with names and addresses, and then pass the petitions around the table among the 'roundtablers' to try to make the fake signatures not look too similar. Call TA sheltered, but I've never heard of this practice before the Link debacle. Maybe because I'm a Republican, and I'm not from Chicago. The News-Sun story is here, but the funny part is that the latest signature to be accused of being a forgery is a former News-Sun editor named Ed Nash, who appears on page 132 (line 15) of the petitions. Problem is, Nash passed away in May 2006.

For those who you who may be new to the story, Senator Link was accused by his primary election opponent, Jerry Johnson (formerly Mayor of North Chicago), of submitting fraudulent petitions to the Illinois State Board of Elections for the Democratic nomination for the 30th state senate district. See our some of our previous posts here and here and here. Among the signatures Johnson claimed were fraudulent on the Link's petitions were at least two other deceased individuals and Charles "Chuck" Fitzgerald, Link's former Republican opponent in the last two general elections.

Link's petitions were primarily circulated by two individuals, Jerry D. Knight and Kenneth Davidson. (Jerry Knight was the circulator for the page of the petition on which Nash's name appears). Johnson claims that the simple fact that around 119 pages of petitions (at 25 signatures per page) out of Link's total of 139 pages were circulated by only two people is highly suspicious in and of itself. See the News-Sun's previous story quoting Johnson here. The fact that forgeries of both the living and dead are turning up on these petitions gives Johnson ammunition to argue that there is a pattern of fraud such that all petitions circulated by the individuals that have the forgeries should be rejected. What the news media has failed to recognize thus far is that, if the 'pattern of fraud' case is made, Johnson does not need to individually knock another 500 or so signatures off Link's petitions (over 1500 have already been removed, out of around 3100) to have Link kicked off the primary ballot. Just having one of the two primary circulators, Knight or Davidson, will do it, due to the huge numbers of sigs collected by these two.

Needless to say the Johnson campaign is continuing to investigate and is working on getting affidavits from those (still living) people whose signatures are apparent forgeries to confirm that such folks did NOT actually sign the petitions. Confirming the dead folks is a little more complicated, but death certificates are public records, so that just takes a little more digging. The two prior confirmed dead folks plus Nash brings the total number of deceased on the Link petitions to three, but who knows how many more will be discovered.

The News-Sun article chides this action as 'fudging.' Link has called all of these allegations "nonsense." TA has a better term for it. Lying. Even better, how about lying under oath? Sadly, Senator Link has still not bothered to do any investigation of these accusations, as far as has been made public. All he has done is send his lawyer to defend the Johnson challenge before the State Board of Elections.

But that may be OK. TA hears that investigations are proceeding with or without Senator Link's acquiescence. And the end result of those investigations may be a lot more interesting than the simple issue of whether Link remains on the ballot for the Dem primary as a result of whatever decision the State Board makes. Then maybe the News-Sun will come out with a stronger condemnation of such actions of the part of an elected official, even a Democrat.