Dupage Policy Journal

The Edgar County Watchdogs have revealed that West Chicago resident Ed Franckowiak filed objections to Husna Ghani's and Rafath Waheed's College of DuPage Board of Trustees candidate petitions on Jan. 4.

The watchdog group speculated in Illinois Leaks that objections raised by Franckowiak may indicate forgery on the part of the candidates.  

Franckowiak objected to Waheed's petition due to the duplicate pages that contained the same signatures of 12 voters. He contended that either Page 1 or Page 4 should be removed from the packet, dropping the number of valid signatures to 65.

In addition, Pages 2 and 3 appear to be duplicates -- again with identical signatures -- that would drop the valid signatures to 53.

Moreover, Franckowiak checked the addresses of the signatories and found that 13 were not residents of the county of DuPage Community College District 502. When the 13 ineligible signatures were removed from the petition, the number of valid signatures dropped to 40, which is 10 fewer than the 50 minimum required by law.

In addition to other objections, Franckowiak noted that Waheed failed to file a Statement of Candidacy; this is a fatal defect in the process.

Franckowiak also objected to the petition of Ghani. The pages containing voter signatures were not numbered, which he contends is a fatal error in the petition. He also alleged that at least 36 of the 86 signatures were not valid, reducing the number of signatures below the minimum of 50.

As the Illinois Leaks article pointed out, an election hearing board will be triggered by the filing of Franckowiak's objections. Although the hearing will not determine any criminal intent or activity, the Watchdogs encouraged the board to forward the election packets to the appropriate agencies for further investigation.