GOP effort to segregate Lake County ballots fails
The Illinois Republican Party's legal attempt to stop thousands of Lake County ballots from being counted on Election Day essentially ended Monday when a judge didn't schedule a hearing on the matter.
The GOP complaint focused on the ballots of first-time voters who'd registered with the help of Citizen Action/Illinois, a Chicago activist group it accused of delivering "fraudulent, incomplete or illegitimate" voter applications to the Lake County clerk's office.
The lawsuit sought to have any such ballots segregated as provisional and counted two weeks after Election Day. The GOP also wanted the court to order first-time voters in Lake County to produce identification, a move critics said could've kept some people from voting.
The matter bounced from Lake County court to federal court and back again last week. On Monday, the issue wasn't brought up in a courtroom, essentially allowing the targeted would-be voters to cast ballots - and have those ballots counted - unhindered.
The suit has not been withdrawn, Illinois GOP spokesman Lance Trover said.
"We're still reviewing our legal options," he said.
Lake County Republican Chairman Dan Venturi, a plaintiff in the suit, said he was disappointed the case wasn't heard by Election Day. The GOP will try to prevent voter fraud Tuesday by stepping up poll-watching efforts, such as checking signatures of prospective voters, he said.
Citizen Action/Illinois Co-Director Lynda DeLaforgue said she was pleased the electoral process will unfold Tuesday as normal. Safeguards are in place to prevent voter fraud, she said.
DeLaforgue said her group registered about 600 Lake County residents in 2008, far fewer than the roughly 5,000 applications GOP representatives tried to segregate.
Most of the questionable registrations connected to addresses in the 10th Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Mark Kirk is in a close race with Democratic challenger Dan Seals.
Republicans have targeted registrations in several battleground states. Democrats here and nationwide have said the tactic aims to suppress voter turnout.
The lawsuit is independent of a criminal investigation into possible voter-registration fraud in Lake County. No charges have been filed.