GOP fears voter registration fraud in Lake Co., files lawsuit
Citing concerns about potential voter registration fraud in Lake County, the Illinois Republican Party on Tuesday filed a lawsuit that could prevent thousands of ballots from being counted on Election Day.
The lawsuit seeks a court order directing the Lake County clerk's office, which oversees elections, to create separate, special codes for all voter-registration forms gathered by a Chicago group called Citizen Action/Illinois and a worker named Terrance LeNoir. In court papers, the GOP and other plaintiffs blame the group and LeNoir for delivering "fraudulent, incomplete or illegitimate" voter applications to the clerk's office.
Additionally, the complaint requests ballots cast by voters registered by Citizen Action or LeNoir to be considered provisional ballots that wouldn't be counted until two weeks after Election Day.
"We need to restore confidence in the electoral process in Lake County and across the country," Lake County GOP Chairman Dan Venturi said during a news conference at the party office in Libertyville.
Citizen Action/Illinois Executive Director Lynda DeLaforgue denied any wrongdoing and said the voters the group has registered in Lake County were handled "in accordance with the law." She said the group registered about 600 people in Lake County in 2008, far fewer than the roughly 5,000 applications GOP representatives said they're seeking to segregate.
DeLaforgue said no Lake County election officials have ever contacted the group to verify individual voter registrars were working on behalf of the group.
"We do not know what system Lake County uses to link voter registration efforts to a particular organization," DeLaforgue said.
Base d on DeLaforgue's estimate, Venturi said Citizen Action may not be responsible for all the targeted applications.
"Maybe we have to find out who did it," Venturi said.
LeNoir could not be reached Tuesday. He has previously declined to comment about his voter-registration efforts.
The lawsuit was announced less than two weeks after Lake County Clerk Willard Helander, a Republican, held a news conference to unveil evidence of fraudulent voter registrations her staff uncovered.
Those documents have been turned over to law enforcement investigators. No charges have been filed.
Republican scrutiny over voter registrations in Lake County comes as the GOP is targeting questionable registrations from the community organizing group ACORN in battleground states. Democratic and ACORN officials have called the move a tactic to suppress voter turnout.
The plaintiffs in the Lake County suit include Venturi and GOP state House candidate Dan Sugrue. Venturi, Sugrue, Illinois GOP Chairman Andy McKenna and two Republican Party lawyers announced the lawsuit at Tuesday's news conference.
Although they denied the issue was partisan, Venturi and the others acknowledged only Republicans were part of the lawsuit and media event.
In fact, although Venturi said he welcomed future Democratic participation in the lawsuit, he admitted no Democrats - including his Democratic Party counterpart, state Sen. Terry Link, or Sugrue's opponent, state Rep. Kathy Ryg - were invited to the conference.
Link could not be reached for comment.
During her Oct. 16 news conference, Helander said more than 1,000 voter-registration forms were received with addresses that don't exist or for people who don't live at the addresses given. She warned the number of forms with false or suspicious information could create doubt about the results of close races on Election Day.
Most of the flagged applications connected to addresses on the county's east side, Helander said. Waukegan, North Chicago, Beach Park and Park City were among the most common cities, officials said.
Those towns fall within the 10th House District, where Republican incumbent Mark Kirk is in a close re-election battle against Democratic challenger Dan Seals.
Venturi - and Helander before him - denied the GOP was complaining about the applications to give Kirk an edge.
Lower-level races, such as those for county board or General Assembly seats that sometimes can be decided by a few dozen votes, could also be affected, Venturi said.
"We're very concerned that it's going to have a huge impact on the election results," Venturi said. "This isn't a Dan Seals-Mark Kirk issue. "This is across the board."
In addition to segregating ballots, the GOP wants the court to order first-time voters in Lake County to produce identification, according to the lawsuit.
John Fogarty, an attorney representing the state Republican Party, specified only first-time voters who registered using mail-in forms should have to produce ID.
That request troubled Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
"It creates a disproportionate burden on the elderly, on people of low income and on ethnic minorities," Yohnka said. "Those are the people who, according to all the studies, don't have IDs. And to institute that a week before the election almost ensures that many people will not be able to participate in this election."
With Election Day less than a week away, Fogarty said he hopes for a court hearing on the lawsuit today.
"We're moving quickly to get this heard," he said.
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Audio</h2> <ul class="audio"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=9&type=audio&item=70">Press conference over GOP suit </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>