Friday, July 28, 2006
Where the Protect Marriage Petitioners Say They Are
Thought folks might be interested in what’s happening with regard to the validating the Protect Marriage petitions. McHenry County volunteers did their part at the County Clerk's office, as I explained here.
Since then, I have been looking at petitions in north central Illinois and have found numerous "bad signatures" in DeKalb County. Given the fact that I registered to vote over 40 years ago, I think the odds are good that my signature does not closely resemble the 21-year old version on record in Woodstock.
I've also looked at the petitions from Winnebago County. There happen to be two election authorities there, one for the city and the other for the rest of the county. I was impressed with the number of people with Rockford addresses who signed petitions found not registered by the Rockford Election Commission. My guess is most live outside Rockford, but inside Winnebago County.
When I was running for statewide office, there was no requirement that my petition signatures be segregated by election authority. That makes little sense, unless one is trying to make it difficult to get questions on the ballot, which, of course, is why the requirement exists in the first place.
At any rate here’s what the Illinois Family Institute just sent out:
Since then, I have been looking at petitions in north central Illinois and have found numerous "bad signatures" in DeKalb County. Given the fact that I registered to vote over 40 years ago, I think the odds are good that my signature does not closely resemble the 21-year old version on record in Woodstock.
I've also looked at the petitions from Winnebago County. There happen to be two election authorities there, one for the city and the other for the rest of the county. I was impressed with the number of people with Rockford addresses who signed petitions found not registered by the Rockford Election Commission. My guess is most live outside Rockford, but inside Winnebago County.
When I was running for statewide office, there was no requirement that my petition signatures be segregated by election authority. That makes little sense, unless one is trying to make it difficult to get questions on the ballot, which, of course, is why the requirement exists in the first place.
At any rate here’s what the Illinois Family Institute just sent out:
Illinois: Massive Errors UncoveredFor more McHenry County Blog, click here....here's where we stand in Illinois: we are working to recover enough names to pass the State Board of Elections (SBE) sample, to qualify for the ballot. (We need a projected number of at least 95 percent of the required 283,111 to make it; click here for more on the math.)
The good news is that we have found about a 10 percent error rate in the SBE's findings in Chicago and Cook County. Some of the mistakes were blatant: for example, a woman who was registered to vote as "Deidra" signed our marriage petition, but her signature was disqualified because she signed as "Dee."
And the signature of another woman who signed as "Sue" was disqualified because on her voter registration certificate she signed as "Susan."
One woman, probably in the rush to sign a petition, omitted the last digit of the street number of her home address. She is a registered voter, but because of that single missing digit, her name was disqualified by election officials.
These are blatant violations of a citizen's right to petition their government, and our attorney Mike Lavelle (former chairman of the Illinois State Board of Election) is working hard to build a case showing that enough good signatures were invalidated to overcome the SBE's initial finding that we fell about three percentage points short of the required number.
We are in the middle of this great legal battle. With each passing day, we and our attornies grow more confident that we will succeed and qualify for the ballot in November. So keep praying and thanks to all those who have helped us in this review process!
