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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