From long-time, recently-returned commenter Mark:
I vote to keep the approximate 24,000 vote discrepancy issue public until a more detailed answer is provided.
Hopefully the McHenry County Republican party is digging into the issue and will provide a more detailed answer than what was given by McHenry County Board Chair Jack Franks and McHenry County Clerk Mary McClellan.
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The McHenry County Republican Party leadership:
Diane Evertsen, Chairman
Chuck Wheeler, Vice Chairman
Karen Tirio, Secretary
Rachel Lawrence, Treasurer
mchenrycountyrepublicans.org/about-us
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It is a major feat just to describe the discrepancy, for those who don’t have the time to piece together what happened.
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The election was Tuesday November 6, 2014.
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McHenry County Blog
Are There Missing Votes in McHenry County?
Wednesday November 7, 2018
mchenrycountyblog.com/2018/11/07/are-there-missing-votes-in-mchenry-county
Articles are not time stamped, but the first comment was 11:47AM on Wednesday November 7th.
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That article has a picture (screen capture) of the McHenry County Clerk’s Election website (Clarity) containing the following statistics as of 9:30AM on Wednesday November 7th:
Voter Turnout Total: 48.4%
Ballots Cast: 115,332
Registered Voters: 238,290
Those statistics are entirely from and for McHenry County (not Kane, Cook, etc.).
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Furthermore, that article contains statistics (but not a screen shot) that were provided to Mr. Skinner by a a blog Friend.
The statistics are of McHenry County votes for various individual races.
This is where the 23,000 – 24,000 discrepancy comes into play.
The statistics at that point indicate about 23,000 – 24,000 more ballots cast countywide, than votes for the various individual races for which everyone voting was entitled to cast a vote (Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Comptroller, and State Treasurer).
Statistics were also shown for the two Congressional Districts, State Senate Races, and State House Races, but let’s set those to the side for now.
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Let’s look at just the Governor’s race using those two sets of statistics.
Keep in the Ballots Cast statistic is from 9:30AM on Wednesday November 7th.
The individual race statistics are from some time and date prior to that.
Ballots Cast – Race = Discrepancy. Percent not voting for the Race.
115,332 – Governor 91,028 = 24,304. 21%.1%
115,332 – Attorney General 90,933 = 23,399. 20%.3%
115,332 – Secretary of State 91,203 = 24,129. 20.9%
115,332 – Comptroller 90,658 = 24,674. 21.4%
115,332 – Treasurer 89,871 = 25,461. 22.2%.
The discrepancy range is from 23,399 – 25,641, which is a range of 1,642 votes, an average of 24,429, which is in turn a range of 21.2% not voting on an individual statewide race.
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Let’s call it a 24,000 vote discrepancy.
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The fact the two sets of statistics were not captured at the exact same time, given what we have since learned, does not come close to accounting for a 24,000 vote discrepancy.
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Those were not the final vote counts.
Votes come in from here and there (various precincts, early voting, etc.).
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Ideally all the Early Voting would have been counted and properly displayed prior to election day, as one cannot Early Vote legally on election day.
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There are all sorts ways for vote counts to purposefully and non purposefully be incorrect.
People specialize in this area.
However, the more details we have, the better our understanding.
And we don’t have many details on this topic.
So the key is to get more detail, to better learn what happened.
About the only thing Jack Franks and Mary McClellan could claim, and they have not done this yet, is that some but not all Early Votes were counted.
And the best retort to that would be fine, give us more details.
And release an audit trail including documents and explanations to back up your details.
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There is more information on the matter in the “Are There Missing Votes in McHenry County” article and comments, and subsequent articles and comments.
And additional issues have been brought to light that are also contained in the articles and comments.
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There should be a documented audit trail that taxpayers can follow if verification is desired.
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A proper audit would include consulting with an independent expert in the election software used by the county to determine if the County’s story is plausible, and what to look for if someone wanted to commit fraud.
Hopefully the Republican party somewhere in the US has such an expert.
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So to summarize, whey were some early votes counted, but others were not?
Is that in fact what really occurred?
How do we know that is what occurred?
Where is the proof?
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The 2018 McHenry County General Election Discrepancy.
The difference between the number of Total Ballots cast in the entire county, and the number/percentage of those who voted for a statewide office.
The discrepancy being blamed on early votes not being counted.
But the number of early votes exceeds the discrepancy.
So what’s up with that?
The latest Early Voting statistic is approximately 33,000?
Which is 9,000 more than the 24,000 discrepancy.
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Early Voting was October 22, 2018 – Monday November 5th 2018.
November 5th being the day prior to the Tuesday November 6th election).
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There was also same day voter registration at this election.
Meaning a voter could register and vote on the same day.
This is more officially called grace period registration.
“Although the traditional voter registration period closes 28 days prior to the election, grace period registration extends that deadline from the 27th day prior to an election through Election Day.”
elections.il.gov/VotingInformation/EarlyVotingLocations.aspx
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There is also absentee (mail in ballot aka vote by mail) voting.
Each county has its own procedures in how to do that.
The county mails you a ballot.
You vote and mail the ballot back to the county by the deadline.
I do not believe this comment will help clarify things but here goes.
As of today, the Uncounted Ballots page on the State Election Board website shows that McHenry County has not updated their numbers since Nov. 13 but Kane and Lake updated theirs on Nov. 16.
McHenry – Uncounted Provisional Ballots – 34
– Vote by Mail Ret’d not counted 8
– Vote by Mail send not returned 1,321
Kane – Uncounted Provisional Ballots – 0
– Vote by Mail Ret’d not counted 0
– Vote by Mail send not returned 1,896
Lake – Uncounted Provisional Ballots – 1,032
– Vote by Mail Ret’d not counted 5,239
– Vote by Mail send not returned 2,198
Re: “Ideally all the Early Voting would have been counted and properly displayed prior to election day,”
Early votes cannot be legally ‘tabulated’ prior to polls closing on election day.
The County website did have a ‘ticker’ displayed for early voting. That ‘ticker’ indicates the number of ‘check-ins’ for early voting, the number of voters mailed blank ballots and on election day it displays the number of ‘check-ins’.
I would think that the number of ‘check-ins’ should always reflect exactly the number of ballots issued but that has not been the case historically.
A picture of the ‘ticker’ was taken on November 7 at 5:42 am when I noticed what appeared to be a LOT of MISSING votes. I still had the screen up from election night the morning after the election. On election night there were still some precincts in Algonquin Township not yet updated with the election day numbers but the difference between ballots cast and actual reported tabulated results was too great in my opinion so I started documenting stuff..
That picture was of a screen brought up on election night and showed a “Last Updated: Nov 6, 2018 5:25PM.” The jpg has a date time stamp of “Wednesday, November 7, 2018 5:42 AM”.
The ‘ticker’ showed a Turnout of 103,391
Early voting 33,044
Election Day 63,216
Absentee 7,131
After taking the picture, I updated the ‘ticker’. The picture shows : “Last Updated: Nov 7 2018 4:55 AM”. The jpg has a date time stamp of “Wednesday, November 7, 2018 5:44 AM”.
The ‘ticker’ showed a turnout of 115,002
Early voting 33,044
Election Day 115,002
Absentee 7,131
The ‘ticker’ is now gone.
Another detail that I can no longer find is the ‘filter’ for Early votes on the Clarity website results page for McHenry County.
I did make a copy of the details displayed with that filter.
The Early Vote filter displayed four separate reports for Early Votes. Here is what it showed for Governor:
Early Vote 1: 9,634
Early Vote 2: 9,564
Early Vote 3: 10,932
Early Vote 4: 2,557
Add them together and you get 32,687 which is relatively close to the ‘ticker’ number of 33,044.
My concern is that the State Election Board has said there is no problem because the problem was fixed before the Canvass was certified. I for one am not buying the reasons put forward by the Clerk or by what appears to be the acting Clerk, the County Chairman.
I want the logs of the transmissions to Clarity made public or viewed by the Party Chairmen and / or their representatives. If we had a competent Clerk with nothing to hide, this would already have happened.
Word of warning to all – the CANVASS date is November 27. No changes can be made to the Official results after that date!
In case anyone wonders why Cal’s blog is the only place where you can get a thorough discussion of the details from this past election, it is quite simple: We do not trust our local newspapers which appear to be totally in the pocket of the County Board Chairman who is a (imho) proven liar.
The President has CNN – we have NWH.
The comment (that is the subject of this post) was made 11/14/2018 at 4:06PM in this post:
McHenry County Blog
Another Commenter Weighs In on County Clerk Mary McClellan’s Vote Counting
November 14, 2018
mchenrycountyblog.com/2018/11/14/another-commenter-weighs-in-on-county-clerk-mary-mcclellans-vote-counting/#comment-493132
Wake up fools. Your vote is meaningless in a rigged system of lies and crookedness courtesy of the caught liar, Mary McClellan and her puppert-master, Jack ‘the jackal’ Franks
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03410/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03410-0
McClellan appealed to us, but before the appeal was heard the entire $35,522.94 in money sanctions was paid by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, leaving McClel-lan owing nothing. She didn’t drop her appeal, however, doubtless because if Judge Grady’s sanctions order stands it will have a number of adverse consequences for her profes-sionally, such as requiring her—should she ever move for admission to the bar of another court—to acknowledge hav-ing been censured in a judicial order and ordered to contrib-ute to the monetary sanctions that the judge imposed. See, e.g., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Petition for Admission to the General Bar (Jan. 2016). Or, should she be asked by judges, potential clients, or potential em-ployers whether her professional conduct had ever been the subject of an investigation, she would have to answer (un-less she lied, which could get her into worse trouble) that she had indeed been investigated for professional misconduct—