McHenry County Blog

Having watched or been a part of the McHenry County Republican Party since 1966, I’ve never seen something like what you see below.

It is an effort by a Republican Precinct Committeeman to get a special meeting of the Central Committee.

The author of the letter won a write-in campaign in Fox River Grove and has been trying to get people on the ballot to run against Democrats throughout the state. She has told me that no where has she met as much resistance as in McHenry County.

In any event, here’s the email that came this morning:

URGENT – DEFEAT JACK FRANKS – WE NEED YOUR EMAIL RESPONSE TODAY

Good Morning,

There has been an effort for several weeks to appoint Republican Tonya Franklin to run against Jack Franks for Illinois 63rd House District.

An ad hoc group of concerned citizens are dedicated to flip 6 Illinois House seats.

This will result in a shift of power in Illinois, reducing the stronghold Democrats have had over Illinois for decades!

This effort is statewide and involves groups who will financially support these candidates.

We have identified the 63rd House District Seat as one of the 6!

When Madigan re-districted the 63rd seat became vulnerable.

According to voter registration rolls, there are approximately

• 12,200 Democrats and
• 19,700 Republicans in the new House district.

This is an election year where the Republican base is engaged.

The seat is winnable!

Despite these incredible figures, McHenry County Republican leadership failed to find a candidate to run against Jack Franks. So we did.

A local Conservative named Tonya Franklin (Woodstock) has submitted her application. We alerted Michael Tryon of this several weeks ago. McHenry County bi-laws require Michael Tryon to form a legal committee consisting of 2 committeemen from the 63rd District. These Committeeman are selected from a meeting of the McHenry County Republican Party.

Our McHenry County Republican bi-laws, (attached) and state statute dictate how a candidate is appointed following a Primary election. These specifications require

“if a legislative or representative district comprises only one county, or part of a county, its legislative or representative committee shall consist of the chairman of the county central committee and 2 members of the county central committee who reside in the legislative or representative district, as the case may be, elected by the county central committee.” (10 ILCS 5/8-5) (from Ch. 46, par. 8-5)

AND

Article XVI (McHenry County Rules attached) pg 16

“The County Chairman shall fill any vacancy in the nomination of any elective office with the name of a candidate selected by a Nomination Convention of the Precinct Committeemen of the appropriate election district in which such vacancy occurs, provided, however, there is sufficient time after said Convention to comply with the statutory filing requirements. The Chairman shall call such Convection promptly after he or she becomes aware of such vacancy, by giving written notice to all Precinct Committeemen of such election district. Candidates seeking such nomination may furnish the Convention attendees/delegates with a written resume (statement of candidacy) and may address the assembled Convention.

The Precinct Committeemen shall have one vote for each ballot voted in his or her precinct by the primary electors at the primary at which he was elected.”

In addition, Rep Tryon is required to call a monthly meeting of the County Committee the 3rd Thursday of each month.

This meeting should have been held on May 17th.

Sadly, despite multiple appeals, he failed to call this meeting, effectively preventing Committeemen of the 63rd District their legally entitled vote to appoint Tonya to run.

While we do not understand why Chairman Tryon refuses to comply with our bi-laws and state statutes, our passion to change Illinois is not deterred. McHenry County bi-laws also allow 25% of the committeemen to call a special meeting.

Bi-laws provide we must get 25% of the Committeemen to call this meeting of the Central Committee, and we must provide 10 days notice to the Committeemen of the meeting.

There are 130 Committeemen in McHenry County, which means we need 30 Committeemen for the 25%.

“Special meetings of the COMMITTEE may be called by the Chairman, or by not less than 25% of the members of the Committee, by mailing notice in writing to each Precinct Committeemen at least 10 days in advance… Article XI page 14)

To meet the 10 day notice deadline and the petition filing deadline, we must call this meeting today.

You have been identified as one of the essential 30 Committeemen to achieve the 25%.

Many of you have already agreed to call the meeting.

A few of you may be just learning of this action this morning.

To assure we have the 30 voices of our Committeemen, we ask you to reply to this email calling for a meeting on June 2nd.

Once we have the 30, we will send out an email to all 130 McHenry County Committeemen to meet on Saturday, June 2nd.

The June 2nd meeting must be held in the 63rd District, so we will hold it in Woodstock on Saturday morning.

The agenda will only be about Tonya’s application, and the meeting will not be long.

Following the meeting the “Representative Committee” will vote on Tonya’s application.

The filing deadline for Tonya’s petition (filed in Springfield) is June 4th. in Springfield. We have arranged to get 40 voters out to gather signatures on Saturday and Sunday. Each will gather 35 -40 signatures. 500 signatures is the minimum and 1500 the max.

To be one of the 25% you need to be a Committeemen in McHenry County.

Please reply to this email and say:

“I call for a meeting of the McHenry County Republican Central Committee”

or something to that effect.

Even if you are out of town on June 2nd, you can still be one of the 30 Committeemen to call the meeting.

Timing is TODAY. Please help us. As needed I can be reached on my cell 847-778-3495.

Respectfully,

Sharon Meroni, Algonquin 45th Precinct Committeemen

= = = = =

If you did not receive a copy of the email and would like to lend your support as a Precinct Committeeman or someone willing to pass the petitions, Meroni’s email is “Sharon Meroni” <sharon@meronigroup.com>

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…

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)

I figured that local Republicans would challenge the petitions of Independent candidate for judge Sally Wiggins, but they didn’t.

Instead, the challenge came as one of many filed by Barrington Hills resident Sharon Ann Meroni.

Meroni is trying to make the point that boards of elections should require candidates to prove they are citizens before allowing them on the ballot.

After all, that is a requirement for running for office, I am sure she would argue.

So, Meroni filed many objections and McHenry County resident Wiggins ended up on her list.

State legislators had already made it difficult for independents to challenge power party candidates. In McHenry County, that translated into a requirement for 4,100 good signatures.

Wiggins turned in about 5,100.

I thought that would not be considered enough of a margin to keep McHenry County Republicans from filing a challenge.

The local GOP, however, kept its powder dry.

But Meroni didn’t.

Monday at 10, a hearing will be held by the McHenry County Officers’ Electoral Board to consider Meroni’s objection.

Wiggins says she has a birth certificate she is willing to share.

I imagine Meroni wishes that President Barack Obama would do the same.

Wiggins is the candidate pioneering the giveaway of roses at parades.