Senate candidates to launch voter integrity plans for Election Day

In the ever-so-close race for U.S. Senate, every vote counts.

The tactics behind making sure neither side gets an unfair advantage in the polls took center stage at an ABC 7/League of Women Voters debate last week, following news that Republican Mark Kirk, in a secretly taped phone conversation, revealed that he’s personally funding the “largest voter integrity program in 15 years.”

Kirk said Rockford, the St. Louis suburbs, and the South and West sides of Chicago were among the “key vulnerable precincts” where voter integrity squads would be deployed to watch polls where “the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat.”

Democrat Alexi Giannoulias accused Kirk of “trying to suppress the African-American vote,” saying the areas targeted are largely minority that tend to vote Democratic. And he says his campaign now plans its own voter integrity project a team of volunteers to visit the same polls that Kirk’s team is at to make sure everything goes smoothly and no one is intimidated.

Both Kirk and Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady scoffed at Giannoulias’ claim, with Brady saying it’s just sensible to make sure things are on the up and up.

The voter integrity efforts, meanwhile, won’t be confined to the areas Kirk mentioned, Brady said. They will extend to the suburbs and around the state.

“It’s all done on statistical modeling,” said Brady, of St. Charles.

Neither he nor the Kirk campaign would say whether heavily black areas in such suburbs as Elgin, Aurora and Waukegan would be targeted specifically.

“It’s common sense, we’re putting resources where the voters are,” Brady said. “I like suburban people, but this stuff happens everywhere.”

Election law allows candidates to have two poll watchers per precinct. And political parties are allowed another two poll watchers at each precinct during each general election.

Election judges have the power to remove poll watchers from voting locations if it gets too crowded or if they’re disrupting the election process.

Cook County Clerk David Orr said Friday he’s told his staff to be “prepared for a very large number of poll watchers” this election.

“It’s a very competitive race. And that’s all ‘Democracy 101,’” he said. “But we always have to look out for people intimidating voters, intimidating the judges.”

Brady said Republicans’ efforts will involve making sure that voting machines are “zeroed out” before beginning and otherwise working properly, and checking voters’ signatures.

He denied charges from Giannoulias’ campaign that have suggested that intimidation tactics might be used.

Brady said the program is a “few hundred thousand dollar effort,” noting Republicans “have to raise money to do it.”

He said the state party’s program this year is “robust,” noting “we haven’t done it this substantially in a long, long time.”

Like Brady, Kirk spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski noted that the suburbs and areas around the state would be targeted as well.

Giannoulias’ campaign, in turn, has responded by launching a voter integrity effort of its own. The campaign has sent letters to county state’s attorneys across the state, board of elections, the Illinois attorney general and the U.S. Department of Justice denouncing Kirk’s efforts and asking for help to ensure that every vote “is cast and counted legally,” It also plans to have poll watchers at voting locations itself, in part to make sure nothing is impeding voting.

Spokesman Scott Burnham said Friday that 1,000 people have volunteered. About 375 will ultimately be placed.

Meanwhile, Orr said he was disappointed that Kirk’s campaign “seems to be targeting almost entirely black neighborhoods.” Orr said the “recent conviction” Kirk mentioned in Tuesday’s debate occurred in the “largely white, mostly Jewish, 50th Ward of Chicago.”

In suburban Cook County, Orr said he could recall very few arrests in the past 20 years, and one or two convictions for voting fraud.

On a national level, The New York Times reported that in 2007, five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department turned up “virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.”

About 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted, the paper reported mostly Democrats, who incorrectly filled out registration forms and didn’t understand eligibility rules.

“There’s always allegations,” Orr said. “But new equipment really protects the voters right to have his or her vote counted.“

Orr said his office has staff members patrolling precincts throughout Election Day. Representatives from the state’s attorney’s office and attorney general’s office will also be on election duty, and a team of lawyers will be on hand to respond to questions and concerns.

Kirk said he’s happy that the Giannoulias campaign has stepped up its poll watching efforts.

“I’m sure he was quite surprised when I said, ‘that’s good,’ Kirk said. “When we have a Democratic and Republican poll watcher in precincts across Illinois, we have a shot at a free and fair election.”