September 15, 2022-
From one of the weekly IL GOP “Chairman’s Update” email newsletters, here is an important article:
Potential Election Fraud in Cook County (and Park Ridge)?
We’ve had a lot of talk lately about election integrity in different places, but Chicago is still best-known for voter fraud. Cook County avoids transparency like a vampire avoids the sun, and the Courts provide cover from the light. The case of Frank DiFranco is illustrative of this dark history.
Mr. DiFranco, a successful Park Ridge Attorney, ran for Cook County Judge as a Republican in the November 3, 2020, General Election. Mr. DiFranco led his opponent, Democrat Patricia Fallon, by 10,439 votes on election night. However, Cook County continues to count any Vote-By-Mail (“VBM”) ballots received for an additional two weeks before certifying the election.
Mr. DiFranco’s lead began to slowly dwindle as the VBM ballots trickled in. On November 17th at 5:00 pm, the Cook County Clerk’s website showed that Mr. DiFranco had prevailed by 485 votes.
But it wasn’t over.
Well after the VBM ballot counting deadline had passed, the Clerk’s Office magically added another 5,660 ballots to Fallon’s total, declaring Fallon the surprise winner by 502 votes.
The shocking part was that although the Clerk disclosed that there were only a possible 43,139 VBM Ballots that were outstanding the day of the election, the Clerk ended up counting an additional 18,423 unexplained VBM Ballots for a total of 61,562.
Mr. DiFranco smelled a rat.
He filed suit against the Clerk in the Cook County Circuit Court. The Court reluctantly granted Mr. DiFranco a partial discovery recount of VBM Ballots in 20% of the judicial district precincts. The goal of a recount is to establish the number of valid votes for each candidate and then extrapolate from the sample count whether the level of voting irregularities would have changed the election. VBM ballots are ‘recounted’ by evaluating the accepted VBM ballot envelopes (since the VBM ballots are removed and made indistinguishable from other counted ballots). It is important in a discovery recount to not only count the number of envelopes, but also to evaluate the outside contents of each envelope. This is because the ballot inside a VBM envelope should only be added to the counted ballots if the envelope properly contains the voter’s signature, address and the signature of a witness.
For reasons still unknown, the Clerk failed to provide all of the accepted VBM envelopes from the sample precincts at the discovery recount. Moreover, Mr. DiFranco and his volunteers were only permitted to passively observe County employees flipping through VBM envelopes that were “readily available”. Despite Mr. DiFranco’s objections, the County employees counted the envelope bundles at lightning speed, preventing any meaningful review of outside of the envelopes.
Mr. DiFranco’s volunteers watched closely and tabulated 3,298 fewer VMB envelopes than the total number of VBM votes tabulated in the discovery precincts. Mr. DiFranco filed a Motion for Summary Judgment based on the massive discrepancy in VBM votes cast versus the number of VBM envelopes after the farcical recount.
In a stunning move, the County Clerk responded by filing its own Motion for Summary Judgment. The Clerk had suddenly “found” electronic images for all but 455 VMB envelopes, even those envelopes not produced in the discovery recount!
Mr. DiFranco went to work, manually reviewing and cataloging each and every electronic image – and noticed something very odd. About 70% of VBM envelope images had been partially redacted (portions were deliberately blackened out) by the County Clerk. Most of the redactions were so poorly done that the outside envelope contents were still visible. Mr. DiFranco and his legal team could see plain as day that the Clerk had attempted to hide the blank voter signature fields, voter address fields and witness signature fields on the envelopes. Every deficient VBM envelope reflected a VBM ballot that should not have been counted in the election. And the County Clerk had attempted to cover up 8,186 faulty ballots.
Mr. DiFranco moved to amend his lawsuit and obtain Summary Judgment based on the cover-up. The County, realizing its massive mistake, immediately circled the wagons.
First, the Court denied Mr. DiFranco’s request to amend his suit as “late” because he “should have known” that the VBM envelopes were facially defective at the recount – even though he was not permitted to review the contents on the outside of each envelope.
The Clerk also complained about the “re-publication” of voter data in Mr. DiFranco’s court filing – the very same data that the Clerk used in its own filing. The Clerk further claimed Mr. DiFranco had violated voters’ privacy by cataloging the deficient VBM envelope fields – despite the lack of any expectation of privacy on the outside of mailed envelopes and the public availability of voter rolls.
The newly-minted Cook County Judge Fallon then piled on, too, joining the Clerk’s opposition against Mr. DiFranco with more arguments about how election materials are private records.
Not a single word was uttered by either County Judge or the County Clerk regarding the government’s active concealment of facial deficiencies on VBM envelopes for counted ballots.
In true Chicago-style fashion, the Court dodged Mr. DiFranco’s revelations. The Clerk provided the Court a fig leaf for this maneuver with a last-minute affidavit from a Clerk employee who swore that the VBM envelope images were legitimate. Mr. DiFranco objected, pointing out that the employee admitted he had never reviewed the physical or electronically-imaged VBM envelopes. No matter. The defective ballots were ignored, and Mr. DiFranco’s lawsuit was summarily dismissed.
At the end of the day, the Court spared the Clerk’s office from ever having to produce all of the original, non-redacted VBM envelopes in its possession (which it should have under the law’s “best evidence” rule).
Fortunately, Mr. DiFranco continues his fight. His case is still pending in the Illinois Court system, and he has also filed a Federal lawsuit (which is stayed pending an outcome in the state proceedings). We can only hope that one of these Courts will have the courage to pull back the curtain on apparent Cook County voter fraud with a real discovery recount.
June 24, 2021-
We are sad to announce that our beloved Republican Women of Park Ridge club member Joan B. Hall, 94, has passed away.
Joan spent her volunteer time in local Republican politics. Joan was a long-time club member, former club President, and received the club’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. Joan also served as Maine Township committeewoman and chairwoman of the Suburban (Cook) Republican Organization.
In 1988, she ran for election as Maine Township supervisor, a position she held for four years. During her tenure, Joan led a massive relief effort for the victims of Hurricane Andrew. She spent 20 years as an elected trustee of Oakton Community College. She was chairman of the board for six years and became trustee emerita in 2005.
Joan will be missed by all.
Pic: Hon. Joan Hall, seated, and Hon. Penny Pullen, standing.