Tonight I joined our local 9/12 Project meeting in Aurora, IL and heard spokesperson for Defend the Vote Sharon Merconi speak. Ms. Merconi is a woman dynamo fighting voter fraud in our state. We can learn a lot from her. What I heard tonight was both depressing and inspiring. Growing up in Chicago, we always knew there was voter fraud. In fact the voter fraud in our state of Illinois is widely known. We remain a laughing stock in this area and we also remain a blue state. It is my premise that the last election for governor was rigged. The Chicago Machine was involved and my guess is that Brady, though winning every county except Cook (and one small other county), threw in the towel rather than fight the crime moguls who run Chicago and the rest of the state. But many of us knew the DFF (Democrat Fraud Factor) was in full swing for this important election to replace Rod Blogojevich.

During the election cycle leading up to the 2010 General elections, Sharon Meroni, Executive Director of Defend the Vote (DTV), began researching how Illinois screens for the citizenship of candidates running for office. What she learned is that while both the US and Illinois Constitutions require candidates for office to be US Citizens, Illinois does not enforce the Constitutional mandates in their election laws.

From the Defend the Vote website:

What she and her colleagues has found will astound you. Some highlights:
–Presently, in Illinois, we do not challenge anyone’s eligibility who runs for office.
–Illinois (and many other states) does not and has never audited early voting–the fraud in this area is unbridled.
–Illinois has never reconciled the printed voting records with the reported voting records.
–We have never audited our software systems (Quinn just passed a law–in part based on Merconi’s recent investigation–requiring a 5% equipment test for Early Voting–which is 18% in IL) (this is a shameful amount to audit as we consider the rampant fraud in this area) and there still remains no required auditing of the actual vote.
–The 2010 Census demonstrated that IL has 14 counties with more adults registered to vote than are eligible to vote. DTV will be working with the election Law Center and the US Justice Foundation to compel Illinois to clean up its voter registration rolls.
–DTV conducted a surprise audit of security procedures at Chicago polling places. It was shown that 239 precincts were scored for compliance with mandated ballot security protocols. A full 90% of the polls failed in 1 or more of 11 key security procedures. Some 59% of the ballot boxes were not even sealed!
–Whereas many of our suburbs use election judges to run the early voting, Chicago uses employees. This is a huge difference as these employees have supervisors who are in charge of them and decide whether or not they keep their jobs and their $6K a year for running this part of all elections. On the documentation that is needed for approval to hold one of these positions, DTV found that 25% of those people did not identify their “right to work” status yet subsequently had their applications approved by Board Electors . Research showed that only 25% (100/400) of these employees were “legal.” One example given was of an application that showed a VISA that had expired in 2006.
–There is evidence to show that the software code for recording votes electronically can be easily tampered with:
Proprietary Software Code: You would think that the political parties would employ someone to check the software code that’s programmed to go into the electronic ballot machines; you know the ones that are never audited for accuracy counting… Surely political parties have exercised their rights to assure the code is accurate by having it reviewed…They must have…{but there was no} evidence of any political party or independent group checking the software code….This means that not only is Illinois not reconciling to make sure what they record as the vote is the same as what was cast on the paper copy, but there is no independent review process to make sure that software that’s recording and counting that vote—is accurate.

As with everything in this arena, no one has been minding the store for a very long time.

New for 2012, the VAP (Voter Audit Pollwatching Program) is being established to create a citizen-driven security assessment of ballot security. Results from these assessments will be used to score each election jurisdiction and Illinois as a whole to bring greater security to elections in Illinois. These results will be published statewide to give a snapshot of the ballot security procedures in Illinois. This is a first and a step in the right direction. Opportunities to be VAPers or Citizen Voter Auditors are on the DTV website.

If we do not secure the vote nationwide, we may as well hand it over to the left who has been on a decades long fraud mission to secure power and control of America. Taking back this power must happen locally. There is no systemic way to stop voter fraud. Defend the Vote works locally and is requesting local volunteers. 100% of the time, the ballot procedures were inadequate in Chicago. This organization is doing something about it! Volunteer! Donate!