Month: October 2021

Today, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy announced the formation of the new ILGOP Election Integrity Committee dedicated to giving voters confidence in their elections by making it easy to vote and hard to cheat in Illinois.

“The integrity of our elections is one of the most important issues we face in Illinois. Using the pandemic as cover during the last election, Democrats in Illinois permanently changed election laws to remove important election safeguards, opening up the election process to more opportunities for fraud. At the same time, they opposed common sense and widely supported election security measures such as a voter ID requirement. 

The 2020 election is over. This is about ensuring the 2022 election is secure and free of uncertainty. As Republicans, we believe legal voting should be easy, and illegal voting should be hard. Democrats seem only to want voting to be easy regardless of the potential for fraud.”  – ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy

While the ILGOP deploys an election protection team every cycle, this committee represents a renewed focus on making sure the upcoming election is free, fair, and transparent leading up to November 2022. The committee will work closely with stakeholders across the state in formulating strategies to implement best practices and recommendations for voter integrity at the grassroots level.

Special focus will be paid to the recruitment, training, and placement of election judges and poll watchers, with the goal of ensuring a bonafide Republican is in place in every polling place across the state. In addition, the committee plans to look at the integrity of voter rolls and to verify Vote-By-Mail (VBM) and election day ballot handling is done appropriately, including adhering to ballot chain of custody standards such as those established by the independent and bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The Election Integrity Committee is chaired by 7th District ILGOP State Central Committeeman Mark Hosty. Others on the committee are ILGOP General Counsel John Fogarty, Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman, Attorney David Shestokas, and LaSalle County Republican Chairman Larry Smith.

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Jenny Thornley is a family friend of JB and MK Pritzker. Jenny Thornley worked on Pritzker’s gubernatorial campaign and then was given a plum job as CFO of a state agency. Unfortunately for Jenny Thornley, she was also indicted last month by a Sangamon County grand jury for defrauding taxpayers and stealing up to $100,000 dollars during her time at said state agency.

What is curious is that a small provision inserted into the recent omnibus criminal justice legislative package, signed into law by Governor Pritzker, was specifically designed to oust the individual who began investigating Thornley for her corruption. That individual was former state trooper and executive director of the State Police Merit Board, Jack Garcia.

From the Chicago Tribune…

“The Illinois legislature’s top two Republicans are asking if Gov. J.B. Pritzker and top Democrats placed a little-noticed provision in the massive criminal justice reform package passed in January specifically to oust the head of a state agency who was investigating a Pritzker supporter accused of filing phony overtime reports.”

[…]

“But GOP leaders want to know why a line was stuck into the sweeping crime package passed by legislators in January that prohibited anyone who has worked for the State Police — as Garcia had — from holding the merit board’s top job as of January 2022.”

That’s right, after a family friend of the Pritzkers was caught by a former state police officer stealing taxpayer money, Democrats covertly inserted a seemingly random provision into a larger bill that specifically barred this former state trooper from continuing in his role in state government because he was…a former state trooper. 

“Pritzker and his Democrat allies utilized the Madigan playbook once again. If someone crosses them – even in the interest of protecting taxpayers – they will go after that person’s livelihood. This corrupt way of governing has gone on for decades, and not only is JB Pritzker never going to fix it, he has become a master practitioner of it.” – ILGOP Spokesman Joe Hackler

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