Dupage Policy Journal

Former state Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) said that the Chicago Tribune published inaccurate information it received from the DuPage County Clerk’s office regarding the voting status of a former DuPage County resident.

Ives, now CEO of the policy advocacy group, Breakthrough Ideas, said that a voter she used as an example of shoddy maintenance of voter lists in DuPage County voted using an old DuPage County address after moving out of the county. The voter was one of over 1,300 who used their old county addresses to vote in the November 2020 elections after having moved out, she said at a press conference.

The Tribune, citing a statement from Clerk Jean Kaczmarek’s office, reported that the voter in question “notified the clerk’s office months before the election that they had moved elsewhere within DuPage County and cast the proper ballot.”

But in a follow-up press conference, Ives said the information was false.

“In fact, voter lists from 12/3/2020, 6/1/2021 and 8/19/2021 obtained from the DuPage Clerk’s office show the opposite,” she said. “For the voter in question, the DuPage Clerk did not update the address for the voter, instead showing him having voted from the same address of the home which was sold in March of 2020 and whose ownership is under a new name. The voter registration data also shows that the voter’s record was last updated 9/3/2010, not July 2020.”

She added that she appreciated the Tribune “looking into this first voter even though they did not research it far enough. We invite them to look into the other 1,342 voters (a list Breakthrough Ideas shared with the paper) and be a partner in investigating the voter list. This type of investigation is necessary, and we appreciate the Chicago Tribune getting the clerk to answer questions that they won’t to the general public.”

Other findings from a four-month investigation by Breakthrough Ideas into irregularities in voting showed that over 27,000 voters are on the voter rolls even though they had not voted in any election in the last 10 years. At the same time, over 7,000 voters who had just voted in the November election were removed from the voter lists between December 20, 2020 and June 1, 2021.

“Having voters that have moved away but still remain on the voter rolls years after registering to vote in another state also invites potential fraudulent voting,” Ives said.

One prominent example is Democratic Congresswoman Lauren Underwood. Underwood voted by mail in the 2016 Illinois primary elections even though she worked, and voted in prior elections, in Washington D.C. An investigation found Underwood used her parents' Illinois address to register.