Rock Island Today

Tazewell County Clerk John C. Ackerman said Illinoisans deserve to know their votes are being counted.

Ackerman expressed his concern as part of his speech at the Rock Island County Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner. The annual dinner was held on Feb. 25. 

"Let me get a bit personal. My dad needs to make frequent trips to the VA Hospital in Indianapolis for specialized treatments,” Ackerman said on Facebook. “Both of my parents may not be able to vote in person on Election Day because of my father's scheduled procedures, inclement weather, or just the challenges of their age. I need my parents to have confidence that they can safely cast their In-Person Early Vote or Vote-By-Mail. We need their Republican votes, and as such, we need them to feel confident that the local election authority will accurately count their vote.” 

Illinois GOP Chairman Don Tracy noted at a meeting the state GOP’s dedication to election integrity as well as a game plan for 2023. “We will continue to build up our infrastructure of human and financial capital to lay the groundwork for future success, so we can compete and win in the Chicago suburbs and in the large downstate cities that resemble those suburbs. Through teamwork, we can loosen the Democrat stronghold on downstate university towns like Champaign, DeKalb, Carbondale, Macomb, Normal, Peoria, and Charleston,” Tracy said, according to Prairie State Wire.

The General Election held on Nov. 8, has its share of mishaps. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Salvi's name was left off hundreds of Schuyler County ballots before the error was discovered. The county clerk is a Democrat. State Rep. Brad Halbrook (R-Shelbyville) said in all of his years in politics he’d never seen such a problem. “I have never seen an error of this magnitude on a ballot. This is a serious mistake,” Halbrook told Chambana Sun. “Absolutely, we should be concerned about this. It is not just the Senate race at stake here. Other races could be affected. What if there is a close local election? What if these ballots are determined to be invalid because of the error? There could be all kinds of repercussions from the mistake made on these ballots. There needs to be a viable solution to correct the error.”

DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek has been broadly criticized for her handling of ballots to ensure integrity. State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi (R-Elmhurst) filed legal action against Kaczmarek for improperly verifying mail-in ballots, Dupage Policy Journal reported. The court issued a temporary restraining order against the clerk on her behalf noting Kaczmarek’s staff were "improperly using Vote by Mail applications to validate a voter's signature on a Vote by Mail ballot.” Mazzochi noted the court's decision in a press release stating "using a Vote by Mail application to qualify signatures on the Vote by Mail ballot itself would be an obvious way to commit ballot fraud."