From the campaign of Ted Dabrowski:Your Attractive Heading
Gov. Pritzker’s election authorities create chaos in Republican primary for governor, so we’re suing themI
| It’s Ted, not Tad. That’s what I had to tell the Champaign County Clerk when I read my misspelled name on the ballot he sent out this week. What a mess. It gets worse. What the heck is Joe Severino doing on the ballot in five counties when he was decertified by the State Board of Elections? Only in Illinois can there be three separate ballots for the Republican primary for governor. This is what election integrity looks like in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Illinois. Illinois’ ruling Democratic party under Pritzker’s leadership claims to be dedicated to election integrity with their “reforms,” but the two developments above show how their new election rules are undermining faith in elections and pulling us toward chaos. In the first case, Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons printed and sent out defective ballots that wrongly identified me as “Tad Dabrowski.” Clerk Ammons has acknowledged the error but refused to reprint the ballots. Ammons is ignoring the mandatory statutory obligation he has to correct wrong names. We’ve now sued the clerk to demand a correction. The complaint, filed Sunday, is here. Ammons, a Democrat, is exceptionally controversial and a convicted felon, as described here. He was later pardoned by Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn. Ammons’ wife is Democratic Illinois Rep. Carol Ammons. In the second case, Joe Severino is on the ballot in at least five Illinois counties, including Lake County, despite the rejection of his candidacy by the State Board of Election. Severino was excluded by the board in its final certification of candidates. Any non-certified candidate appearing on ballots in some counties but not others directly violates the constitutional and statutory requirement for statewide ballot uniformity, thereby disadvantaging voters and candidates in some jurisdictions. Voters who would have chosen an alternative to Severino will now have no vote, since their votes for Severino will be discarded. The bottom line: the failure of Gov. Pritzker’s State Board of Elections to properly control the ballot process has created confusion and an unequal treatment of voters, jeopardizing people’s confidence in the integrity of Illinois elections. |
