For more information, please read this: 

 "I being a qualified voter, registered from (place your full address here) _______________________________________________________________________________ in the _______ precinct of the (Ward, or Township) _________________ in the (City or County election authority) ___________________ do hereby solemnly swear (or affirm) that the individuals who are identified by name, address, date of birth, date of death, voter registration ID and other necessary voter information in the attached electronic file are registered voters within the (Election Jurisdiction – City or County election authority)  ______________________ is not a qualified voter within the voting precinct where they are registered to vote within the (Election Jurisdiction – Either your County or City)______________________  and hence I ask that each name be erased from the register of such precinct because this voter is deceased.  The attached file identifies this voter as a perfect match with their name, address, date of birth, date of death, and voter ID. 

     Affiant further says that I have personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the above affidavit. This information was acquired from a professional data mining company with over 20 years of experience named Procysive and located at 2530 Meridian Parkway Durham, NC 27713 with a phone number of (919) 260-7189  and a web address of  http://www.procysive.com/ Procysive  specializes in this type of investigative research, search, and analysis. In comparing the voter registration files for (City or County election authority) ________________ this file includes only names that are a perfect match for name, address, Date of Birth and Date of Death. These names include the voter registration number.

Pursuant to: 10 ILCS 5/4-12, 10 ILCS 5-15, and 10 ILCS 6-44

 (Signed)_________________________________________________

    Subscribed and sworn to before me on (insert date).

______________________________________________________________________

Such application shall be signed and sworn to by the applicant before the county clerk or any deputy authorized by the county clerk for that purpose, and filed with said clerk. Thereupon notice of such application, and of the time and place of hearing thereon, with a demand to appear before the county clerk and show cause why his name shall not be erased from said register, shall be mailed, in an envelope duly stamped and directed to such person at the address upon said register, at least four days before the day fixed in said notice to show cause.
    A like notice shall be mailed to the person or persons making the application to have the name upon such register erased to appear and show cause why said name should be erased, the notice to set out the day and hour of such hearing. If the voter making such application fails to appear before said clerk at the time set for the hearing as fixed in the said notice or fails to show cause why the name upon such register shall be erased, the application to erase may be dismissed by the county clerk.
    Any voter making the application is privileged from arrest while presenting it to the county clerk, and while going to and from the office of the county clerk.

 (10 ILCS 5/5-15) (from Ch. 46, par. 5-15)
    Sec. 5-15. Any voter or voters in the township, city, village, or incorporated town containing such precinct, and any precinct committeeman in the county, may, between the hours of nine o'clock a.m. and six o'clock p.m. of the Monday and Tuesday of the third week immediately preceding the week in which such April 10, 1962 Primary Election is to be held, make application in writing, before such County Clerk, to have any name upon such register of any precinct erased. Thereafter such application shall be made between the hours of nine o'clock a.m. and six o'clock p.m. of Monday and Tuesday of the second week prior to the week in which any county, city, village, township, or incorporated town election is to be held. Such application shall be in substance, in the words and figures following:
    "I, being a qualified voter, registered from No. .... Street in the .... precinct of the .... Ward of the city (village or town of .... ) of the .... District .... town of .... do hereby solemnly swear (or affirm) that .... registered from No. .... Street is not a qualified voter in the .... precinct of the .... ward of the city (village or town) of .... or of the .... district town of .... hence I ask that his name be erased from the register of such precinct for the following reason ..... Affiant further says that he has personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the above affidavit.

    Subscribed and sworn to before me on (insert date).

    Such application shall be signed and sworn to by the applicant before the County Clerk or any Deputy authorized by the County Clerk for that purpose, and filed with the Clerk. Thereupon notice of such application, with a demand to appear before the County Clerk and show cause why his name shall not be erased from the register, shall be mailed by special delivery, duly stamped and directed, to such person, to the address upon said register at least 4 days before the day fixed in said notice to show cause.
    A like notice shall be mailed to the person or persons making the application to have the name upon such register erased to appear and show cause why the name should be erased, the notice to set out the day and hour of such hearing. If the voter making such application fails to appear before the Clerk at the time set for the hearing as fixed in the said notice or fails to show cause why the name upon such register shall be erased, the application may be dismissed by the County Clerk.
    Any voter making such application or applications shall be privileged from arrest while presenting the same to the County Clerk, and whilst going to and returning from the office of the County Clerk.
(Source: P.A. 91-357, eff. 7-29-99.)

The letter below was sent to Rock Island County Clerk yesterday.

As part of our continuing research, we are looking at all training procedures to assure they are legally compliant with state and federal laws.  As the letter below indicates, we are questioning Rock Island about voter registrations and new voters.

As you read below the fold, you will get the full details.

September 25, 2012

Karen Kinney
Rock Island County Clerk
Rock Island County Office Building
First Floor - 1504 Third Avenue,
Rock Island IL, 61201-8624

Dear Ms. Kinney,

I am writing for clarification on the procedures your office has established to comply with the provisions of the Help America Vote Act for certain voters who register using a form authorized under the National Voter Registration Act.  Here is the relevant portion of HAVA.

We needs funds! Defend the Vote has three critical projects it is fundraising for:

Vulnerability Assessment of Election Security in Illinois:  The vulnerability assessment will be completed by the gold standard in security assessments, Argonne National Laboratory.   Descriptions of the vulnerability assessment were provided by Dr. Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP, head of the Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) at Argonne National Laboratory in last week’s news conference.  Later today, I will update you on developments in this program.  We have obtained funding to conduct a vulnerability assessment on Chicago and Cook County, and wish to raise additional funds to conduct similar assessments in other locations in Illinois.  Each assessment is about $10K and through us, can be paid directly to Argonne National Laboratory.

The Absentee Audit of Chicago and Cook County needs to begin tomorrow.  This audit will track the entire process of absentee voting.  For 45 days, 5 full-time auditors will observe and document how absentee voting is conducted in Chicago and Cook County. Most of our cost is in staffing.

Security Assessments across all of Illinois.  These will be done by Illinois voters and by election judges and pollwatchers in Illinois.  This assessment will score the security of the vote in polling places across all of Illinois.  Most of our cost is in distribution.

Defend the Vote is non profit, but we are not tax exempt.  We are a small, bare bones operation.  We appreciate and need financial contributions to our programs.  When you contribute to our work, you can be assured you dollars are making an impact! 

Regardless of all the work volunteers do in American politics, if the vote is fraudulent, your work is nullified.

On Wednesday  September 19^th, 2012, at the Union League Club in Chicago, Defend the Vote, an Illinois-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower citizens to protect the integrity of elections, held a news conference to announce a project with Argonne National Laboratory to evaluate the election security of Chicago and Suburban Cook Country's elections systems through a vulnerability assessment. This project is generously funded by Jack Roeser, Chairman and founder of Otto Engineering and Publisher of Champion News.

Speaking at the press conference was Jack Roeser, Dr Johnston, Ph.D., CPP, and Manager of the Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) at Argonne National Laboratory, Republican Cook County Chairman, Aaron Del Mar, and Defend the Vote Director, Sharon Meroni. 

In some instances, in Illinois, gaining access to voting equipment and the software that runs it, requires the participation of the political parties.  At the press conference, Republican Cook County Chairman Aaron Del Mar pledged his full support of this project.  In addition he announced that the Cook County GOP is working on election security by assuring that Republican election judges are placed throughout the City of Chicago and Cook County.

Details of the vulnerability assessment project were discussed at the press conference.  The assessment is set to begin immediately.  Defend the Vote has contacted Dominion Voting, but they have not returned our calls.  We will follow-up with further information later today.

What is a vulnerability assessment?

The procedure for reviewing an election jurisdiction’s security and offering suggestions for ways to improve it is as follows.  This is similar to the procedures that the Argonne Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) uses for vulnerability assessment on other types of (non-election) security programs.

Disenfranchised military voters.

Media Alert

Wednesday news conference on Chicago and Suburban Cook County voting security evaluation project

Defend the Vote, an Illinois-based nonprofit organization whose mission to the empower citizens to protect the integrity of all public elections, will hold a news conference tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept. 19, to announce a project with Argonne National Laboratory to evaluate the election security of Chicago and Suburban Cook Country's elections systems.

The news conference will include Sharon Meroni, Director of Defend the Vote; Chairman and founder of Otto Engineering  Jack Roeser, who is providing funding for the project; and Dr. Roger Johnston, Manager of Argonne National Laboratory's Vulnerability Assessment Team.

The news conference will be held tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. at the Union League Club of Chicago, Room 710, 65 West Jackson Blvd., Chicago.

Media contact:

• Defend the Vote Media Affairs: (847) 382-1100
• Argonne media contact: Angela Hardin, (630) 252-5501, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.    

This morning, someone asked one of us Vote Defenders what was the best thing she could do as an individual to combat voter fraud and we told her "get informed, stay informed, and inform others". Dust off the library card or head over to Amazon.com and see if you can find any of these books for a good price (used copies will be around $5 or so for most of these, sometimes a little less); you can also probably find a lot of these in used book stores if they carry a decent selection of public policy works:

Who's Counting -- by John Fund and Hans von Sparkovsky

Deliver the Vote -- by Tracy Campbell

Stealing Elections -- by John Fund

Steal This Vote -- by Andrew Gumbel

How to Rig an Election -- by Allen Raymond

Proving Election Fraud -- by Richard Charnin

Stealing Democracy -- by Spencer Overton

Loser Take All -- by Mark Crispin Miller

This is a good start for building up a reading list of books on voter fraud. Some of these are better than others, but you'll find that out for yourself, and some slant toward one partisan camp or the other.  We think it's important to read pretty much everything out there on voter fraud and to make up our own minds, of course keeping in mind the authors' individual biases. Both parties contribute to voter fraud in some way and the "bad guys" involved don't always have a (D) or an (R) after their names.  That's surprising to a lot of people, but if you read a lot on the subject you'll see that depending on the year, the issues on the ballot, and the power plays involved voter fraud can be encouraged and abetting by many different camps.  

There would not be so many books on this topic if, according to the media, this was something that really never happened. It is a very complicated issue affecting all of us that unfortunately not a lot of people dedicate themselves to reading about.  

Maybe we should start a Vote Defenders book club and review these books and note any particular bias in them while charting common threads and themes? 

Let us know if you'd like to see that, or even participate in the reviewing!

We ran across this hyper-partisan and incredibly biased "article" dealing with efforts in Colorado to prevent voter fraud.  The writer, Jackie Chazan, employs many common tactics amongst "reporters" who pack a political agenda in their writing without disclosing that to readers.  We as Vote Defenders on this site certainly have personal opinions in our private lives -- but those are put to the wayside while we're working on projects for Defend the Vote.  You will not see anything partisan on this site, ever, as a result. 

The same can't be said for the opponents of ballot integrity in the media.  There's a clear agenda amongst many in the media, such as Chazan, to perpetrate the lies told by those who seek to encourage, abet, and allow voter fraud in our elections.  We'll leave it you readers out there to guess what their motivations are and whom they seek to help by preventing efforts to secure the ballot, but we suggest you start questioning more of what the media puts in front of you.

The first thing to do is to read an article like this and look for words the writer may use to disparage ballot integrity efforts.  If you spot writing like this, consider the author's opinion and bias when evaluating any information you find in the article.  

"Consider the source" is a good motto to live by when popping onto any webpage or picking up a newspaper or magazine.  

We know it takes effort to stay informed and there isn't always a lot of time in the day to do so -- that makes it tempting to read something by a writer like Chazan and "just hope it's accurate" when in fact you're being misinformed about an important issue that affects us all. 

Just something to think about on this Sunday afternoon as many of you might be reading papers at home.  Skip to the Funnies.  Those are often the best (and most accurate) parts of some newspapers that are out there!