Keely Cat will be most disturbed if readers of McHenry County Blog who live in Algonquin, Dorr, Grafton and Nunda Township don’t vote today.
Keely’s reaction to those who do not vote.
Trust me. You do not want to be on Keely’s wrong side.
From the Way Back Machine comes a 1968 envelope and real estate tax bill that I mailed in 1968 when I was McHenry County Treasurer.
Next to the six cent metered postage is the following message:
Vote and the choice is yours! Don’t vote and the choice is theirs! Register…or you have no choice!” reads the envelop message on this McHenry County Treasurer’s 1968 real estate tax bill envelopment.
Here’s what the envelop looked like:
On the back of this 1968 envelop from the McHenry County Treasurer’s Office, it says, “Serving the public from8-5 week days.”
And, just in case you are more interested in the tax bill than the envelop, here it is:
This McHenry County real estate tax bill showed up in an old book. It is for a home on Woodland Drive in Crystal Lake. The bill was $107.22.
That used to be what Republicans hoped was a joke that Chicago Democrats supposedly said.
Now, a group called Rock the Vote has adopted the slogan.
Hard to believe, but take a look below:
“Vote Early and Often” is the slogan of Rock the Vote.
This photo was found here on Illinois Review, which caters to Illinois conservatives.
Illinois Review has recently been ranked more popular that Capitol Fax Blog, which has a decidedly liberal bent.
More on problems with vote accountability here.
The Susan B. Anthony Fund post card.
Friday, the Pro-Life Susan B. Anthony Fund mailed the two guys in the Skinner household postcards urging us to get registered and vote November 6th.
My son in high school and I got identical post cards.
It was the same day I read of a judge in Pennsylvania having allowed a state law to stand requiring the showing of photo identifications prior to being allowed to vote.
And the same day my son got his freshman Photo ID from Crystal Lake Central High School.
As I handed him his post card, I told him he could now vote in Pennsylvania.
“But, I’m not 18,” he pointed out.
He also pointed out that he didn’t live in Pennsylvania.
So much for Dad’s lame jokes.
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For those needing to brush up on their feminist history, Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion.
David McSweeney
Dee Beaubien
A new law popped up on March 30th that prohibits anyone who has voted in a partisan primary election from running in the next general election.
Just a continuation of what Abner Mikva was told when he tried to volunteer at his local Democratic Party ward headquarters:
“We don’t want nobody nobody sent.“
One would have thought that Dee Beaubien, who worked the phones to get her husband’s budget man, Kent Gaffney, appointed to fill Mark’s spot, would have voted in the Republican primary election for him.
But she didn’t.
She took a non-partisan ballot and voted only the electric aggregation referendum in Barrington Hills. The proof can be seen below:
Dee Beaubien's voting record shows that she voted only a non-partisan ballot (the electric aggregation referendum) when she voted in Barrington Hills last month.
So Dee Beaubien’s efforts to prepare for a candidacy against Dave McSweeney, Republican primary election victor, is
Let the battle of the millionaires begin.
Kathie Schultz
Here’s the report from McHenry County Clerk Kathie Schultz:
As of the close of voting [Saturday] there have been 3702 absentee ballots applied for. Of these 2770 were early voters.
February 2010 3233 total absentee—2409 early voters
February 2008 6235 total absentee—4720 early voters
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
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.
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!
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.
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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)
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
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