McHenry County Blog

And, according to this email today from Defend the Vote‘s Sharon Meroni, the Democratic Party election officials won’t even tell who the judges will be who take votes from nursing home residents.

The voting will be Friday and she seeks Republicans to volunteer to ensure chicanery does not occur.

Editor Note: Aaron Del Mar, Cook County Republican Chairman, is authorizing this investigation of the nursing home vote in Cook County.

Subject: RE: UNLAWFUL? NURSING HOME – Legal ALERT

This is the problem…

Noah Praetz has stated he cannot send me ANY lists of nursing home judges because he sent me wrong data before and I reacted by asking the question with all of you cc’d. This is like punishing the recipient of his error.

Time is short. Friday is voting day for the nursing homes. In March 75% of the nursing home residents’ rights were violated. Yet not one of you, except Noah, responds?

How can this be?

Who is going to watch these voters?

Where is the Illinois State Board of Elections?

For the FIRST time ever, Chicago managed to get voting Republicans into the appropriate nursing home election judge positions. (info via Commissioner Richard Cowen).

This compared to Cook County which is COMPLETELY stonewalling all of our access… And refuses to send us the names of the election judges for the Nursing Homes?

Only they know who the mysterious judges are. Judges, that Cook County has already had trainings for. Did they sign in to train anonymously?

In Cook County, our most vulnerable voters vote on Friday. Over 3000.

Our election security is partisan based.

The law lays out how the nursing home patient vote is to be conducted.

Cook County is in violation of these laws.

Who is protecting the nursing home resident’s vote? Who has the jurisdiction? Please, I need to know, are we alone in this battle to protect the most vulnerable voters in Cook County?

Regards,

Sharon Meroni 
312-242-1818

Defend the Vote doesn’t think Mickey Mouse should be able to vote.

Whenever folks see something on Chicago TV or in the Chicago Tribune or Sun-Times, they place inordinate significance to the subject matter.

If it matters to those news deciders, then it must be important, right?

Monday the woman who called the Special Meeting of the McHenry County Republican Central Committee for the purpose of giving Tonya Franklin a chance to run as a Republican against six-term incumbent Jack Franks, got a full page and a half for her favorite cause–Defend the Vote.

In the collective memory of Illinois citizens is the 1960 Presidential election in which voters in cemeteries cast ballots.

I remember when my father moved to Illinois to take a job with the Barley and Malt Institute in 1958, he lived in a single-room occupancy hotel in Chicago before finding a rental at 100 W. Crystal Lake Avenue in Crystal Lake.

That fall, after the election, my father had forwarded to him a letter from the Democratic Ward Committeeman thanking him for voting.

Guess that means my Dad voted twice, because he certainly voted in McHenry County.

Meroni is on a tear attacking the Chicago and Cook County Democrats for not having a Republican judge present when nursing home residents vote.

Her organization has Argonne National Laboratory security experts looking at ballot security and guess what?

It’s not so secure.

The headline on a Chicago Sun-Times article is

Easy voting machine sabotage?

The headline on the internet is

Researchers break open voting machines in test of security

Democrat David Orr charges that the group “has a partisan agenda.

We don’t need no investigation by no goo-goos, seems to be the attitude of the Chicago Board of Elections and the Cook County Clerk.

No looking behind the curtain, here, folks.

An email from Sharon Meroni, who organized the effort to get Tonya Franklin on the ballot to oppose Democrat “Chainsaw Jack” Franks.

Meroni, a write-in candidate for Republican Precinct Committeeman in Fox River Grove, did something I have seen no other GOP Precinct Committeemen do since 1966–she got a Special Meeting of the Central Committee.

I want to thank the spirited coalition of supporters for Tonya Franklin’s application to be placed on the Republican ballot against Jack Franks.

Tonya Franklin

We worked hard to get our vote.

We failed.

Truthfully, that still hurts.

I am new to McHenry County Republicans.

Many of us are.

This project to get a legitimate vote for or against Tonya’s application had positive momentum with the goals to inform fellow committeemen (and precinct captains) while providing a venue to vote.

My personal disappointment at being denied that vote is raw.

I work at Defend the Vote every day and actually suspended my research to fight for the committeemen’s vote with the McHenry County Republican Party leadership.

That is how important this matter was to me.

This fight wasn’t planned.

After discouraging GOP Precinct Committeemen from attending the Special Meeting, Chairman Mike Tryon drove back to Crystal Lake, rather than to his vacation home in Missouri, to chair the meeting.

Rep Tryon asked us to find a candidate.

We did so, and we stepped up to support that candidate.

The discovery process of learning that Rep Tryon was actually actively suppressing the legal vote of the Committeemen was just that; a discovery process.

It was disappointing.

One unavoidable outcome of the meeting is on-the-record proof that our own party leadership literally actively worked to defeat the committeemen’s effort to have the vote Illinois law and McHenry Count By-laws specifically provides for.

Rep Tryon has never responded to the charge that he failed to set up the required meeting, despite being given ample notice that the vote from the “committee that was not a committee” (in his letter redefined as the Executive Committee) was not authorized in Illinois Law or in McHenry County Republican By-Laws.

In addition, Rep. Tryon made the political and tactical decision to cancel the meeting required by McHenry County By-Laws, and which should have been held on May 17th.

If this meeting had been held, Committeemen would have had the vote (for or against Tonya’s application) that is entitled as solely ours by Illinois law.

When we asked for this May 17th meeting to be scheduled, Tryon’s leadership responded with silence and then a cancellation of a meeting that was never scheduled.

When we asked McHenry County Republican Committeemen for a special meeting and achieved the 25% required in McHenry County Republican By-laws, Tryon’s leadership responded with two blasts from an email intimating it was not a legal meeting and that the Chairmen would not attend…Leaving the definite impression the June 2nd Special Meeting was not legitimate.

Then Chairman Tryon and Vice Chairman Mark Daniel showed up to Chair the meeting.

Chairman Tryon admits on the record, more than once, that it this was a legitimate meeting, but we needed a quorum.

Mark Daniel and Sharon Meroni compared Precinct Committeemen lists they had received from the McHenry County Clerk's Office.

When committeemen questioned Chairmen’s obvious manipulation to suppress a quorum, he literally ran off the stage.

Disappointing?

Chairman Tryon was unable to speak to us.

While emotions were high, we were not shouting; Committeemen who had the floor, asked for accountability.

We had lawyers and parliamentarians there to assure the meeting was professionally run.

Our attorney, a skilled election lawyer named Laura Jacksack, and the parliamentarians were instrumental in guiding the meeting. (You guys were great!)

It was an exercise in Liberty!

The result, Chairmen Tryon, who was unable to withstand scrutiny, ran off the stage.

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!

Algonquin Township’s Sharon Meroni challenged the candidates running for legislative office in her part of the state, just as she challenged the candidacies of various judges, including Independent Sally Wiggins’ during the last election cycle.

Amanda Howland

Dan Duffy

Her most recent action is to drop the three candidates for State Representative to fill Mark Beaubien’s seat starting in 2013, but to continue the challenge of State Senator Dan Duffy’s and his Democratic Party counterpart Amanda Howland’s right to be on the ballot. Both are unopposed in the primary election.

She is seeking administrative review in a case entitled Meroni V ISBE, filed in Cook County Tuesday.

“Our suit seeks to get at the underlying Constitutional issues with as little disruption to the different candidate campaigns as possible,” Meroni explained.

“The underlying issue is that the US and Illinois Constitution requires citizenship, but there is no process where the candidate’s citizenship qualifications are entered into the public record,” she explained.

“Consequently, we [at Defend the Vote] believe that infringes on my right to vote.”

“We are prepared to take this all the way to the Supreme Court,” she concluded.

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.”

What fun!

One of the people challenging Barack Obama’s petitions is writing about the experience.

Sharon Meroni of Barrington Hills has a web site called Defend the Vote.  The following comes from it:

The Obama-Biden Illinois web site reported on filing its team's petitions.

Ten days ago we pulled petitions for various presidential and delegate candidates running for office in Illinois.The original purpose was to investigate voter registration fraud. This investigation continues.

On Friday. January. 2012, I requested 60 petitions of these candidates.  Each petition is placed on a single CD. 59 CD’s were correct.

The one for Barack Obama was blank.  Naturally on Saturday morning, we quickly appealed to the Board of Elections, requesting the petition be sent immediately.

Crickets…. Until Monday.

Monday at 8am, a team of us arrived in Springfield to personally inspect the original petition and to begin to research the reason for the games…. Obviously, the delay in receiving the petitions handicapped our ability to prepare.

Upon inspecting the petitions, it was quickly discovered that Mr. Obama’s ballot application had significant errors.  Frankly, we were astounded to see how sloppy it was; missing notary signatures, missing pages, and with slews of unregistered voters.

As a result, three of us have decided to challenge Mr. Obama’s petitions.  What does this mean? It means we do not believe he has the 3000 good signatures required by Illinois law to get on the ballot.  If we prevail, Mr, Obama will not appear on the ballot in the Primary election.  I don’t know what the ramifications are for the General election in November.

What is next?  Next week we will meet at the Illinois State Board of Elections, and the Hearing Officer will be assigned.  Following that is a very tight time frame where the Obama campaign will have days to respond and then The Objectors will respond to them, a follow-up is allowed of the Obama team, and then a voter registration record examination occurs.  This should all take place before the end of January.  Timing is VERY short…

An email arrived about a meeting being held tonight between Crystal Lake and Cary at the Algonquin Township Hall by Defend the Vote, a group headed by Sharon Meroni. Meroni has sunk her teeth into the problem of ballot security, or, rather, the lack of ballot security, which is gaining steam nationally.

Without the confidence that ballots are being counted accurately, citizens can lose confidence in the legitimacy of their system of government.
JOIN US AT THE Algonquin Township Center in Crystal Lake, Illinois, Located at 3702 U.S. Highway 14, Crystal Lake, IL, 60014.

Tuesday November 30th, 2011 from 7:00-8:30pm CST

Registration 6:30 to 7:00 -

We will work from 7:00 until 8:30 and wrap up as needed the last 30 minutes.

Click here for the map to the event

Registration is Not Required, but, if you wish, you can registerhere

Elections in Illinois:
DID YOU KNOW?

Early voting in Illinois has never been audited.

This means no one has ever checked the software recording 18% of the vote in Illinois to verify the official vote count is the same as the votes recorded on the paper ballot!

Not once!

Are elections in Illinois secure?

After a series of investigations, Defend the Vote proves they are not.

Sharon Meroni is the Executive Director of Defend the Vote.

In 2009 she began to investigate elections in Illinois. What she discovered will startle even the seasoned political junky in Illinois.

Defend the Vote’s published report Vulnerability Assessment and Security Audit of Election Day Polling Place Procedures, summering our audit of security processes on Election Day in Chicago during the Municipal Runoff Elections in 2010, concluded that the election security procedures in Chicago are 100% ineffective in securing the vote.

The question becomes what can we do about it?

During Tuesday night’s meeting we will discuss what is wrong with elections in Illinois and we will break into groups to work out solutions.

For the March 2012 elections we are launching the first ever citizen empowered audit of Illinois elections.

The program is called VAP:

Voter Auditor Pollwatching program.

Become a VAPer!

It is simple.

We will train voters and provide you with the credentials to audit your polling place for security protocols after voting.

The result is we will establish a statewide score of how Illinois secures it’s vote.

And we WILL insist on changes before the November 2012 elections!

The event begins Tuesday at 6:30pm (CST) – Join us to register and socialize. We will start the program at 7pm and break up at 8:30. We are expecting this to be a hands-on group. November 29th at Algonquin Township Office: 3702 U.S. Highway 14, Crystal Lake, IL, 60014.

We welcome Christmas cookies and/or treats. Refreshments will be available.

Find out what Illinois citizens can do to protect our vote! We will break into work groups. Every one is welcome to attend and admittance is free.

Become part of the solution to ballot integrity.

Join Defend the Vote, Become a voter auditor.  http://www.DefendTheVote.com

Unavailable on Tuesday?

Defend the Vote will hold 4 meetings in this area during December to develop our teams. Our next next email will provide locations, dates and times.

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