McHenry County Blog

Ken Tentler

The next day he sent the following, but without a photo.   Now I have the picture, so you can read what he has to say and see what Tentler looks like.

I am a candidate for Trustee in Lake In The Hills.  This is my press release to you.

These are the attitudes I carry with my in my public career-

• This is a world in need of repair.
• Flat land open developing is beneath us as 21′st century beings.
• It is likely that other institutions that guide us as individuals and people are as bulky, selfish and undeveloped.
• We live in ways that are very difficult to factor all of the variables when they are needed.
• There are many things I think we all want to see more of-a healthy happy people, high end challenging-multi-development with underneath parking, challenging political debates with 3-4 candidates for mayor or village president etc..

I am a strong young mind and I am interested in ideas, quality thinking, problem solving, critical and independent thinking and vibrancy/urgency.  This things together are a powerful headlight to a world viewpoint.

My website-kjttrustee.com is an attempt at some valuable political talk and summary. The website will continue in a different form once elected (the current content will continue to be added too and refined) to share insight-my political travels and battles, help others and help me find the things I am looking for.

While I do not consider myself or my views malleable, I very much can learn on a daily basis and even last night [the night of the McHenry candidates' forum] picked up on about 10 ideas the helped.

The ballot in Lake in the Hills looks like this:

Your vote for Mickey Mouse won’t be counted in Illinois anymore.

There are some people who care about government enough to try to win election through a write-in.

Gone are the days of being able to write yourself or Mickey Mouse in and have such a vote counted.

First the General Assembly force people to register their intentions the week before.

Then two weeks before.

Now we’re up to about two months before.

In fact, the deadline passed last Thursday.

And, one vote isn’t enough to get one elected. Write-in candidates must obtain the same number of valid votes as the number of signatures they would have had to gather had they petitioned to get on the ballot.

The full McHenry County ballot has not yet been published, but I can think of one district that continually issues bonds without a referendum–the Crystal Lake Park District–for which no one filed for one vacancy. (The West Beach House was built without voters having been asked to approve it.)

Here are the people who have stepped forward to ask for write-ins:

WRITE-IN CANDIDATES

CONSOLIDATED ELECTION
APRIL 9, 2013

VILLAGES

• Village of Lakemoor President – Kimberly Beach, 28623 Wagon Trail Rd., Lakemoor
• Village of McCullom Lake Trustee – Anthony “Tony” Koczor, 4704 Parkview Dr., McCullom Lake

FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT (FPD)

• Hebron-Alden-Grenwood FPD Trustee – Leo C. Tibbits Jr, 9614 St. Albans St., Hebron

LIBRARY DISTRICT

• McHenry Library Trustee – Monica Leccese, 7112 Mohawk Dr., McHenry
• Spring Grove Trustee – Susan Sucher, 2315 Falcon Ln., Spring Grove

PARK DISTRICT

• Crystal Lake Commissioner – Michele Hartwig, 9705 S. Muirfield. Lakewood

SCHOOL DISTRICTS

• School District 46 Board Member – Vickie Marconi, 2515 Willow Creek Rd., Prairie Grove
• School District 46 Board Member – Mischelle Yantis, 3714 Overland Rd., Crystal Lake
• School District 156 Board Member – Timothy Hying, 2107 Olde Mill Ln., McHenry
• School District 157 Board Member – Jennifer Read, 3406 Forest Ridge Dr., Spring Grove

Barrington Hills resident Sharon Meroni has made ballot integrity a major goal in her life.

Colleague Steve Boulton attended her presentation to the Chicago Board of Elections and wrote the following article, reprinted here with permission of the author

Defend The Vote: Great News from the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners on Ballot Security Improvements

Sharon Meroni

Defend The Vote had an excellent day yesterday at a long-awaited session with the full Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Sharon Meroni, Executive Director of Defend The Vote, addressed the Commissioners on behalf of the organization, dong a simply marvelous job.

Sharon is now very knowledgeable about the details, procedures and voting equipment as a result of one and one-half years of nearly full time investigation and analysis.

She is now bringing that hard-won knowledge to bear in seeking key changes to improve ballot security.

She quite obviously has the respect of the Board and its staff, I believe because she has “walked the walk” on ballot integrity and can speak to them at their own sophisticated levels, and now knows the topics in detail.

At the meeting, to the stunned but happy surprise of Sharon, myself (as Chairman of Defend The Vote), and our assembled supporting spectators, we learned that the Commissioners have not only considered the deep concerns raised by Defend the Vote over the past months, they have acted on more than one with important change to improve ballot security in Chicago beginning now in 2012.

Sometimes fighting the good fight gets results!

1. Precinct Polling Place Ballot Security. Over the past two years, Defend The Vote and the Chicago Republican Party conducted a lengthy investigation of ballot security protocols for polling places and the security measures used to secure ballot boxes, finding major avenues for vote fraud.

Sharon’s work was financed by Champion News.

Then, in April 2011, Defend The Vote used this newly gained knowledge to conduct a surprise audit of Chicago polling places in the Chicago Municipal Runoff election.

In assessing well over 200 precincts, the Audit found major lapses in ballot security at 90% of the polling places, and 58% of the polling places had unsealed ballot boxes. The findings were put in a 43 page report by DTV Executive Director Sharon Meroni that was published in the peer review Journal of Physical Security, of the Argonne National Laboratory.

As a direct result of that work and the Audit, the Board has substantially revised and upgraded its polling place security procedures, particularly with regard to the multiple security seals used on ballot box equipment, which was a major area of concern.

The Board is even going so far as to buy new seals which will be more difficult to compromise, and will be recording serial numbers of all seals on all ballot boxes, thereby closing a major security loophole.

From now on, any seals removed and/or replaced for any reason must be kept and tendered back to the Board, along with explanations. It is a major victory for ballot security in Chicago!

2. Early Voting. A huge ruckus erupted at one Early Voting site in Chicago in the 2010 General Election, in the 35th Ward (Logan Square).

It was based on concerns that correct procedures were not being followed by the site supervisor.

Chicago GOP Chairman Eloise Gerson was a near-daily visitor at the the 35th Ward site to inspect the voting, and I myself was forced to spend many hours poll watching there in October 2010 to keep things on the straight and narrow.

As a result of that situation, and a resulting further investigation by Defend the Vote and the Chicago Republican Party, sharp concern was raised over the fact that the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners only used employees to run Early Voting sites, not actual sworn and qualified Election Judges.

The employees are not required to meet the qualifications of Election Judges.

The concern was only heightened when it was discovered in an investigation in late 2010 and early 2011 that foreign national employees of the Board were acting as supervisors and clerks at Early Voting sites, frequently deciding if U.S. citizens could vote or not.

One such employee was the very Supervisor at the 35th Ward Early Voting Site who was the center of the controversy in 2010.

Later in 2011, Chairman Gerson issued a lengthy letter to the Board detailing our findings and demanding that the Board scrap the use of employees (though legally permitted under the Election Code), to use only qualified and sword Election Judges at Early Voting sites.

The Board has agreed to make key changes.

• First, the Board has agreed that no foreign national Board employees will be assigned to work at Early Voting sites.
• Second, one Democratic and one Republican Election Judge will be present at each Early Voting site, with full power to make complaint and demand action by the Board and its field investigators, as a check on abuses at Early Voting sites.

We see this as a major improvement in the integrity of the Early Voting system!

3. Electronic Voting and Electronic Vote Counting. This was a lengthy and open discussion at the Board Meeting.

Sharon expressed the substantial overall concerns of DTV with electronic voting (which is banned in many countries, such as Germany) based on possible ease of tampering, giving specific examples of what we see as flaws in the current system.

The Board would not agree that electronic voting was demonstrably insecure, but agreed to continued discussion with DTV to air and investigate the matters we have raised, which run into key specifics of current machine operation, as well as known examples and testimony regarding the ease of computer tampering with vote counts.

The City and Cook County have invested heavily in new electronic systems, so substantial evidence of flaws will be required.

This must be considered a work in progress.

In all, we believe the Board has made concrete, important and genuine steps to address ballot security concerns.

Just as importantly, the Board welcomed constructive engagement with DTV on the issues we have raised.

As Chairman of Defend The Vote, at the close of the public discussion I rose and thanked the Commissioners not only for the important improvements implemented for 2012, but also for their openness to dialogue and suggestions.

There is far to go, as several important areas of concern and investigation remain to be explored.

But this was a great start and a very good day for Chicago voters!

Here’s the scoop from Defend the Vote‘s Sharon Merconi:

“The past couple of days were very busy!

“As workers in the political field know all too well, the period just after filing for the ballot is a crazy time in the election cycle.”

Here’s what happened last Wednesday with Meroni, Cleveland and Boulton v Obama:

[It] “is a direct challenge to Mr. Obama’s application for ballot placement in the March 20, 2012 Illinois Primary, based on defects in his signature petitions. The Objectors withdrew their challenge on Wednesday January 25th.

“President Obama’s filed application for the Illinois Primary was surprisingly sloppy, as the signature petitions had numerous defects.

“The President filed the maximum limit of 5000 signatures, and needed 3000 valid ones to get on the Illinois ballot.

“By law, petitions must be consecutively numbered; he had a 20 page gap.

“Some petitions were missing the circulator signature, and some were not notarized.

“More importantly, our preliminary review indicated a higher than expected number of signatures were not by registered Illinois voters, as is required.

“Only this objection would attack enough signatures to potentially keep Mr. Obama off the ballot.

“The others were valid, but insufficient in scope of signatures to block him from the ballot.

“Bottom line, he must have 3000 valid signatures out of 5000 filed, and we had only 7 calendar days to conduct a review.

“Right off the bat, we lost two days by the fact that our order for ballot petitions was ‘mishandled’ by the ISBE.

“Near the close of business on Friday, January 6, 2012, we received 60 disks of ballot petitions of various candidates as requested, but upon return to the office we found that the disk for Barack Obama’s petitions was . . . BLANK!!!

“The difference was crucial to our efforts to review the Obama petitions with a sound and double-checked database analysis. As it was, we filed the Objection to the Obama petitions with seven minutes to spare at 4:53 pm on January 13, 2012.

“During the records review of the petition signatures, held at Illinois State Board of Election offices in downtown Chicago, ISBE clerks called ‘Checkers,’ rule on each challenged voter signature on a line by line basis though comparison with ISBE records on computer screens.

“In this case, over 3,000 individual reviews had to occur.

“On respective sides of the Checker are single representatives of each party, who notes each ruling, and asserts the party’s position.

“After six hours of checking at eight computer terminals, a substantial ongoing effort by 40 Board employees and volunteers, we determined in the final stages of the records check that Mr. Obama had reclaimed sufficient signatures to cross the 3000 mark required for ballot placement.

“Through close review and extensive use of pocket calculators, we had to face the mathematical reality that the President was certain to prevail on the challenge, and consequently instructed our counsel to file papers to withdraw the Objection to avoid using additional hours of effort and time.

“No further action will follow.”

Back when Tom Roeser was the Public Affairs Director with Quaker Oats, he helped form Operation LEAP.

The acronym stood for “Legal Elections in All Precincts.”

Operation LEAP died, but there is a linear descendent called “Defend the Vote” run by a McHenry County woman named Sharon Meroni.

Her groups goals are broader than Operation LEAP’s, but because she is not a liberal the Chicago media gives it no attention…at least that I have seen.

Sharon Merconi

Meroni, who can be reached at info@defendthevote.com, wants to share the following message, which I received today:

I am the Founder and Director at Defend the Vote. Defend the Vote is an Illinois based organization with the mission to empower citizens to protect elections. I am a McHenry County resident. You have covered some of our activities and I thank you for that.

I wish to provide you and your readers with a link to my post relating to the ballot challenge of 5 candidates that applied for ballot position for the Illinois legislature in the 52nd District House Representative and 26th District Senator.

These are the legislative bodies that should be involved in the issue driving my action.

Who is responsible to assure candidates on the ballot are constitutionally eligible, and thus legally qualified?

I am not talking petition signatures…

In the statement of candidacy the candidate self affirms they are legally qualified for the position. The public record holds proof for each aspect of legal qualification, except one.

It does not hold proof of US Citizenship.

Yet, the Illinois Constitution requires US Citizenship to qualify for ballot placement.

[Meroni challenged the candidacy of Independent candidate for McHenry County Circuit Court Judge Sally Wiggins in 2010.  You can read how she dropped the challenge once Wiggins presented her birth certificate here.]

My research uncovered and proved that no one checks in Illinois. The title of my blog post is “If not you, who?” [In the post, Meroni tells of her challenges to the candidacies of all three Republican candidates for State Representative in the 52nd District and both candidates for State Senate in the 26th District, where she lives.]

No one in Illinois verifies citizenship qualifications for any state or federal office voted on in Illinois.

Defend the Vote is involved with ballot security in three areas:

• Ballot Access,
• The Voter, and
• Casting the Vote

Sharon Meroni of Defend the Vote addresses Crystal Lake Tea Party members.

This issue addresses ballot access.

We have active programs addressing the security of the vote and also about voter registration roles.

Along with Champion News, Defend the Vote was responsible for the audit of Chicago elections in 2011.

Our security assessment was conducted by assessing precincts on 11 security measures during the April 2011 Municipal Runoff election in Chicago.

We found 215 out of 239 precincts failed on one or more critical security measure: 139 precincts failed to seal the ballot box. ([An article about this study can be found here.]

The report outlining this explosive research was peer reviewed and published by the Argonne National Laboratory’s prestigious Journal of Physical Security.

As a result of our research, security expert, Dr. Roger Johnston found

security protocols protecting the vote in Chicago to be “wholly inadequate,” essentially failing 100% of the time to prove the ballot is secure.

We are conducting a state-wide assessment of elections in Illinois (Voter Auditor Pollwatcher program – VAP) and we are actively lining up Voter Auditor Pollwatchers to evaluate the security of the vote across the state of Illinois. (Voters we welcome you to join in – it takes about 20 minutes after you vote!)

We are researching election security across the state with an emphasis on security procedures; assessing effectiveness in theory and in practice. We are working with every election authority in the state (Letter to Count Clerks) and are well on our way with most major election jurisdictions (based on population) covered for this 2011 March Primary VAP program.

This week we will begin to collect information on how Illinois secures the military vote.

Ultimately we will research and report on aspects related to the security of Illinois’ military, absentee, early, nursing home and Election Day voting.

Defend the Vote has already proven Illinois does not audit Early Voting.

18% of the vote in Illinois has never been reviewed for accuracy. I wish I could tell every Illinois resident this fact.

We DON’T audit early voting returns AND We DON’T audit the software recording the early vote.

Never… Not once!

18% of the vote in Illinois is done through early voting. That percentage is growing.

I speak frequently about this issue. Defend the Vote is non-partisan; empowering citizens to protect elections. Please join us!

There is so much to do.

On election days, a sign like this could be posted on Crystal Lake's four $16,000 TIF monuments

And, it could help pay for the four $16,000 stone pillars.
= = = = =

Photoshopping by one Heck of a Guy blogster Allan Showalter.

Argonne's Journal of Physical Security in which Sharon Meroni's most recent article is published.

A press release from Defend the Vote:

AUDIT REPORT PEER REVIEWED AND PUBLISHED BY THE JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL SECURITY

How difficult is it for the dead to vote in Illinois?

Defend the Vote tested this question in an April 5th audit of Chicago elections. Results were complied into a report.  This report, Vulnerability Assessment and Security Audit of Election Day Polling Place Procedures for the April 5, 2011 Municipal Elections in Chicago, Illinois, by Sharon Meroni, was peer-reviewed and published by the prestigious Journal of Physical Security. The Journal of Physical Security is published by Argonne National Laboratory’s Vulnerability Assessment Team.

On April 5, 2011 a group of citizens from various political parties and the tea party, equipped with audit questionnaires based on the Chicago Board of Election’s, Election Judge Training Guide, visited 239 polling places in Chicago to score the CBoE’s compliance with their own security protocols. The objective of the security assessment (the Audit) was to test enforcement of security protocols that are in place to protect our ballot.

The results were stunning: 210 precincts (91%) failed on one or more of the 11 critical security measures that were evaluated, 66% of them failed on more than one measure.  59% of the time, the CBoE failed to secure the ballot box. 

Included in the report is an analysis of the security around the memory devices and the seals that safe guard them. The stack of boxes pictured below next to the open door, contain all of the memory devices used in voting equipment on Election Day in the City of Chicago.  Each box has the memory devices for one Ward.  These boxes were observed in this location during two separate trips to the warehouse.

Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP, is head of the Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) at Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Johnston has an expertise in ballot security. In reviewing our report, he stated,

“The paper by Sharon Meroni discusses an analysis of election security in Illinois. The findings are disturbing and relevant to elections elsewhere in the country. Election integrity is a homeland security issue and we had better start taking it seriously.”

Further, Dr. Johnston found that “Chicago Board of Elections security protocols are wholly inadequate in securing the ballot.”

Defend the Vote’s mission is to empower citizens to protect elections.  Along with our growing team of partners, we believe that elections should be governed by “Best Practices”  that are based on security over the chain of custody of the ballot and all equipment related to running elections.

With the release of this report we are introducing the VAP program (Voter Auditor Pollwatcher) in Illinois.  This is the first-ever citizen run audit of elections in Illinois. Across the entire State of Illinois, voters will be trained on security for their polling place. Once trained, VAPers will be given credentials and a scoring sheet to take a snapshot of security at their poll. The audit will take about 20 minutes and pollwatchers can be credentialed for multiple polling places.  Audit sheets will be returned to Defend the Vote for analysis and further actions.

The VAP program is only one of several programs Defend the Vote is sponsoring. Defend the Vote first discovered and reported that Illinois has never audited Early Voting for accuracy of the vote. Early voting, 18% of Illinois vote, has never had the paper trail and the electronic tally reconciled. Separately, we reported that the Chicago Board of Elections employs non-citizens to run early voting locations, and that the I-9 employment verification forms for these employees are not in compliance with federal law.

The April audit was endorsed by Champion News and Jack Roeser.

For more information, please contact me at info@defendthevote.com 847 -382-1100 (office)

A press release from the Huntley Tea Party:

Public Forum on Fraud in the Election Process

For years now we have heard stories of problems with our Election Process. There was the “hanging chads” in Florida, the Acorn issues when registering voters and recently a problem in Chicago where 59% of the ballot boxes were not secured properly.

With Primaries coming up in March of 2012 and a major election in November, we must ensure that we have a valid Election Process in our local area.

The last Huntley Tea Party meeting I attended was a pre-2010 candidates' night.

On August 22nd, the Huntley Area Tea Party will host Sharon Meroni, Chairman of “Defend the Vote” at a public forum.

This will be held at the Cosman Center in Deicke Park, 12015 Mill Street in Huntley.

Sharon will be speaking on Fraud in the Election Process and what citizens can do about this problem.

For additional information you can visit the HATP web site at www.huntleyteaparty.com

Sharon Meroni of Defend the Vote addresses Crystal Lake Tea Party members.

Without ballot integrity, democracy disappears.

If you can’t be sure your vote is being counted correctly and only votes of others voting legally are being counted as well, what trust would you have in the governmental system?

The Crystal Lake Tea Party met last night at the Park District’s Park Place to hear the findings of those who have investigated the situation. Below is Tea Party leader Mary Alger’s report on what happened:

“Citizens gathered at Park Place in Crystal Lake, IL and were completely drawn in by 3 speakers that presented the problems we face in election integrity and were given a solid citizen action and legal plan to fix it.

“Sharon Meroni of www.defendthevote.com tracked election processes & procedures in the City of Chicago which took her on an odyssey of adventures and discovered jaw dropping revelations.

Chicago Republican Election Attorney Steve Bolton speaks about ballot integrity problems of early voting.

“Unsecured ballots, illegal election workers, and problems with the voting machines were but a few of the problems found.

“Potentially the biggest problem is that there is virtually no auditing of early voting although Illinois law says that 5% of all votes must be audited.

“Based on many of these findings, Chicago GOP Election attorney, Steve
Boulton, spoke of his bringing several legal actions to the Chicago Board of
Elections to seek remedy.

“His letter can be found here.

“Evert Evertsen, a naturalized US citizen since 1984, knows how precious the
right to vote in this country is and has been protecting the process for
seven years by being an election judge and training poll watchers.

“These 3 speakers compelled all citizens to get involved in securing the
voting process. Sign up sheets were filled out that will allow citizens to
become highly trained and effective poll watchers, election judges, learn to
use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to seek election information and
to clean up the voter registration rolls.

“These actions will become a new focus of TEA Parties throughout the country and with www.illinoistea.org affiliated TEA Parties in our state.

“Simply put, without the sanctity and assurance of our vote being counted we lose our Republic.

One of the missions of the TEA Party is taking citizen action from the street corner and bringing it to the polling place.

“We will start in Illinois of all places to show the nation that it CAN be done starting HERE, starting NOW.”

Mary Alger
Crystal Lake TEA Party

Considering the recount in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, folks locally might be interested in the following Flag Day meeting.

A press release from the Crystal Lake Tea Party:

Who: The Crystal Lake Tea Party

What: The CL Tea Party will present a program that will empower the citizenry to ensure fair and accurate recording of the vote and to properly secure it.

Park Place at the corner of Oak and Woodstock Streets in Crystal Lake is where the meeting will be held.

Why: A non-partisan audit of voting precincts during the April 5th, 2011 election in Chicago revealed issues of non compliant ballot security procedures to be documented at an astounding 90%. Real vulnerabilities in securing the equipment and ballots were revealed and documented. Come see what was revealed and learn what you must do as a citizen to assure that your local election is without these revealed flaws. With passion and commitment from the citizenry this program can become a national campaign leading up to the 2012 election and beyond.

When: Tuesday, June 14th (Flag Day)

Time: 7-9 PM

Where: Park Place – 406 W. Woodstock St. Crystal Lake, IL

Fee: Free – donations accepted