Illinois GOP Chairman Don Tracy urged the Illinois Attorney General’s Office to complete an investigation of suspected fraudulent Democrat mail-in votes prior to the Nov. 8 election.
“In a free society, honest elections are critical to both good governance and voter confidence in close elections, which is why Kwame Raoul, the current Illinois Attorney General, should expedite this investigation of suspected vote fraud before the conclusion of the November 8 election,” Tracy said. “No one should want such an investigation hovering over an important election. The good people of Madison County and the health of our democracy deserve no less.”
Tracy discussed the issue at a press conference in Edwardsville on Monday. He was joined by Madison County Treasurer Chris Slusser, Auditor David Michael, Board member Stacey Pace, Rep. Amy Elik of District 111 and District 112 candidate Jennifer Korte.
He applauded the authorities who reported the suspected vote fraud and initiated the investigation, saying "election integrity is very important."
Roughly 39 fraudulent ballots were flagged by a team of Republican and Democrat election judges. They raised concerns with County Clerk Debbie Ming-Mendoza after discovering the same handwriting for write-in candidates while processing mail-in ballots for the June 28 Democratic primary election.
Tracy added that the handwriting on the write-in portion of the mail-in ballots at issue did not match the handwriting on the certification envelopes.
Ming-Mendoza previously said that after the election judges discovered the suspected fraudulent ballots, she immediately notified law enforcement and an investigation was initiated.
“Thankfully, systems in place were able to identify a situation for investigation,” Tracy said. “The Democrat and Republican election judges noticed the issue, notified the clerk, who notified law enforcement, and all those parties should be thanked for their role in referring suspected election fraud for investigation.”
Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haine filed a request petitioning the court to appoint a special prosecutor due to a conflict of interest. That case was sealed by Madison County Circuit Judge Bill Mudge.
The matter was referred to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. A spokesperson has confirmed that an investigation is underway, Tracy said.
Tracy said that while anyone can be writing in on a ballot regardless of which office they are running for, he explained that a ballot only contains the space for a write-in candidate if a declaration of write-in candidacy is filed ahead of time.
“In the subject Democratic primary this past June, there were only two declared Democrat write-in candidates: Ebony Huddleston and Barry Julian,” he said. “Both running for circuit judge in the newly drawn judicial subcircuits. We Republicans have been very critical of these brand new gerrymandered judicial subcircuits and they are the subject of a pending lawsuit. Both Huddleston and Julian ran in that Democrat primary as write-in candidates because they were not on the ballot due to their nominating petitions being legally deficient.”
The petitions indicated that signatures were gathered on a start date of Jan. 13. However, the Judicial Circuits Redistricting Act of 2022, which was supported by Democrats and signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Jan. 7, established that petitions could not be circulated earlier than 15 days after enactment - or Jan. 22.
“In sum,” Tracy said, “what we know today is that it has been reported that handwriting on roughly 39 mail-in ballots in the June Democrat primary was so suspicious that both the Republican and Democrat election judges that the county clerk referred these ballots to law enforcement and there is now a vote fraud investigation being handled by the Illinois Attorney General.”
“We don’t know yet who is responsible for this suspected election fraud or whether multiple people were involved,” he added.