Chicago City Wire

Illinois Conservative Union Chair Carol Davis recently described her first-hand experience poll watching in former House Speaker Michael Madigan's district.

The experience, Davis said was unpleasant.

"I’m hoping that that exposure of that type of deception will help to start opening people’s eyes to the truth about elections also," she said. "If our politicians were capable of those things, they certainly were capable of manipulating elections. I’ve seen enough personally. I’m just not just talking from a level of someone who hasn’t been involved on the front lines. I have been a poll watcher in Michael Madigan’s district back in 2012 during the primary and I have seen firsthand the way the machine runs elections in the city. And, yeah, it’s not pretty.”

An NYU vote fraud investigation compiled articles from the Chicago Tribune about election irregularities in 1972. A federal grand jury indicted 37 people after an investigation found that almost half of the votes cast in certain precincts were fraudulently filed. Even when the Republicans had election judges in Chicago, they were chosen by Democratic Party bosses. For the March 1972 primary, a Chicago Tribune investigator worked undercover at the Chicago Board of Elections and found evidence of more than 1,000 election fraud cases. 

According to Cook County Record, in 2020, Democratic Supreme Court Justice Thomas Kilbride failed to retain his seat on the Court. He only received 55 percent of the vote which was less than the 60 percent he needed to retain his seat in a district that stretches from Will and Kankakee Counties all the way to the Mississippi River. Kilbride's opponents linked him to former House Speaker Michael Madigan, calling him "Madigan's favorite justice." Kilbride's judicial independence was questioned in recent years after he penned a decision blocking a referendum from going to the ballot that would change the way legislative districts are drawn to oppose gerrymandering. Madigan and his allies were against it and successfully sued to stop it. The Kilbride race drew a lot of attention from both sides, with $10 million in total being spent on it. This means that the makeup of the Illinois Supreme Court could lean Republican if Kilbride's replacement is a Republican, who will be running in a somewhat favorable district to Republicans.

An investigation in DuPage County into dead voters requesting mail-in-ballots is picking up steam. DuPage County State's Attorney Bob Berlin said that his office is investigating ten vote-by-mail applications sent to the County Clerk's Office from people determined to have died before the applications were filled out. DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek suggested that this was a test to see if her office would catch it: "Testing the process is not a game. It's just not worth it - don't even try." She said the fact that her office caught this proves the system works. According to Berlin, four of the ballots are being actively investigated while officials do not have enough evidence to charge the other six. Kaczmarek did not say what made her think these ballots were testing the system, and Berlin did not comment on the allegation, NBC Chicago reported.