Dupage Policy Journal

Bob Grogan is awaiting the results of a recount that he is hopeful will soon reinstate him as DuPage County Auditor.

The Grogan campaign paid for the recount in late August and completed it in early October. 

This came after Grogan uncovered irregularities in the vote count in the November auditing race when he was seeking re-election. 

“I lost by 75 votes out of almost a half a million cast 11 months ago,” Grogan said on a fundraiser page. “I may have won and I may have lost. At this point I truly don’t know. I am just a licensed CPA and Certified Fraud Examiner who knows enough about elections that I have even authored an election law that was passed in Springfield, but in this humble auditor’s opinion no matter what the outcome of my race is, the Clerk has a lot of questions that need to be answered.” 

DuPage County Clerk Candice Adams, a Democrat, conducted the final upload showing that Grogan lost the election.

Grogan was granted a recount – which he and over 50 volunteers finished in early October – and has an opportunity to retake the office. 

"To be clear, success in this recount isn't some long shot either,” Grogan said.

On a GoFundMe page seeking funds for the recount, Grogan said everything started on the night of the elections, when the counting started, when he led his Democratic opponent with several thousand votes.

However, each upload for the following two weeks reduced his lead, which was still present.

“Finally, with the last upload of votes 14 days after the election, for the first time I was losing. I lost by 75 votes out of 466,167 votes cast in the race. Making the final posted results 50.01% to 49.99%,” Grogan said.

Adams, the county clerk, conducted the final upload of votes where it was determined Grogan lost the re-election to Democrat William White by 75 votes. 

So far in that election, five voters were accused of voting on behalf of dead people.

Subsequently, an investigation was conducted by Grogan’s campaign in which numerous irregularities were discovered, and a judge ordered a recount of the votes. 

His opponent, lawyer Bill White, avoided being served by legal paperwork regarding the recount for five weeks. White was sworn in on Dec. 1. 

State’s Attorney Bob Berlin has also been investigating the election in which he has turned up several instances of alleged voter fraud. 

More than 40 volunteers were involved in the investigation and more than 120,000 ballots were examined.

Grogan’s team found that over 1,626 votes are unaccounted for. 

“[T]hat indicates more ballots were counted than people who were listed as having voted. This is 20 times the margin in the race,” Grogan said. 

In addition, he said many of the votes counted have no initials of judges and that mail ballots were sent in and counted after Election Day had passed in the fall. 

According to state statute, every ballot must have judicial initials.

Grogan said the judge in the case said the count from that  one voting district alone could have given Grogan the victory, calling the race a “effectively a tie.” 

“The judge in the ruling on only the one polling place with no initials on ballots said, ‘if the 436 ballots at issue are declared defective, and not counted, petitioner would net 82 votes, which exceeds his opponent's 75-vote victory margin and would swing the election results in petitioner’s favor,’” Grogan wrote. 

As many as 10 percent of the ballots were sent by mail in envelopes, several of which had a postage cancellation after the election, which is completely unacceptable, he said.

When a recount was ordered, the county clerk fought back, requesting $300,000, which was later reduced to over $56,000 on appeal. 

“Crazy as it sounds, in Illinois if a candidate finds enough discrepancies to overturn an election, the candidate needs to put up cash,” said Grogan. 

Ultimately Grogan said the result is in the hands of the court at this point.

“So to answer everyone’s question, ‘where does it stand?’ The honest answer is we don’t really know. I was asked by a reporter how much longer this process would take and my response was unfortunately the American legal system is very inefficient, only surpassed by the inefficiency of the Illinois electoral system,” Grogan said.