Shadows of Trump’s false stolen election claims hang over Illinois GOP ‘election integrity’ efforts

Hiring precinct election judges and poll watchers has traditionally been routine work for state political parties and candidates trying to ensure ballots are cast and counted properly leading up to Election Day.

But this year, the Illinois Republican Party and its candidate for governor, Darren Bailey, have classified those roles as part of a broad “election integrity” effort that is a follow-up to baseless claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen. What’s more, that effort is being led in part by individuals who support former President Donald Trump’s debunked assertions.

“Election integrity has not just been an issue since the election of 2020, but because of the historic cemetery turnout in Illinois it has been an issue here in Illinois for a long, long time,” state GOP Chair Don Tracy told party leaders at the Illinois State Fair in August. He apparently was referring to rumors of deceased people still on Chicago voting rolls having cast ballots for John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential campaign.

But Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections, said “the allegation that there’s any kind of widespread fraud (in Illinois) is completely without any evidence whatsoever since the creation of the board in the 1970 constitution. There is no evidence.”

The emphasis on “election integrity” by Republicans presents a conundrum for the party. While Bailey has urged people to sign up for his campaign’s ballot integrity training to serve as local poll officials, the downstate Republican state senator taking on Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has actively encouraged voter registration, early voting and vote-by-mail — the same activities Trump and his ballot integrity allies have said are sources of fraud.

“You can go vote early right now today and I encourage you to do that,” Bailey said in a recent video. “You can vote now at your county courthouses. Call your county clerk and find out where some locations are at. But don’t forget to vote.”

It is a different message than the one Bailey, who Trump endorsed this summer, espoused shortly after the 2020 election when he decried the election process, saying “all this fraudulent activity is absolutely disgusting. It’s wrong. It’s, in my opinion, almost the highest form of treason in our country.” It wasn’t until this August that Bailey’s campaign said Joe Biden was the “duly elected president.”

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Republicans pointed to their ballot integrity effort last week when they were notified that early vote and vote-by-mail ballots that had been distributed by the Democratic county clerk in tiny downstate Schuyler County listed the wrong GOP candidate for U.S. Senate. The 45 in-person ballots and 307 mailed-out ballots will be impounded and new, corrected mail ballots will be sent. Despite the potential disenfranchisement of voters in a major statewide race, there is no early evidence election fraud was behind the ballot misprint.

For their “election integrity” efforts, Bailey and the state GOP have enlisted help from Carol Davis of Carol Stream. She is a former west suburban tea party activist who for years has held election training sessions as head of the Illinois Conservative Union and now is a leader in a national network of election deniers along with top former Trump aides.

“We are working with Carol Davis,” Tracy, the GOP state chair, told Republican leaders about the state party’s election integrity efforts in partnership with Bailey. Davis lists the “Bailey Election Integrity Group,” Republican attorney general candidate Tom DeVore and the state GOP as “partners” in her Illinois Fair Elections Coalition, along with Republican organizations in Will, LaSalle, McLean and Tazewell counties.

Davis contends “there is fraud in every election in this country.” She has signaled belief that left-wing, anti-fascist or antifa groups, rather than Trump supporters, were behind the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She expressed disappointment that a cold kept her away from the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., on that day. She has questioned the integrity of election machinery. And she has said vote-by-mail ballots are susceptible to fraud and are part of a Democratic plot to do away with in-person voting.

Speaking on a podcast of the conservative Illinois Family Institute after the November 2020 balloting, Davis said the presidential election was “absolutely not” free and honest and cheered on Trump’s legal challenges, even though more than 50 of the court challenges were ultimately dismissed.

“Even if he does not prevail, this could be a parting gift of his administration to the entire nation — of exposing fraud, exposing the varying avenues of fraud and teaching the nation about how prevalent it is and how we might deal with it,” she said of Trump. “Of course, I am hoping that he will prevail, that all of the deceitful actors will be exposed.”

Davis also has contended that Democrats in Illinois “and their methodology of how to swing an election has been taught throughout the country.”

“Let’s just say the best practices of deceit have been picked up by many organizations,” she said.

In an interview on a Springfield radio station in August in advance of one of her seminars, Davis said, “You know, what we’ve discovered, unfortunately, is that through the decades, the left has pretty much infiltrated every aspect of the infrastructure of our elections. So we want to make people aware of that.”

She did not respond to requests for comment from the Tribune.

Davis’ own “Illinois Election Integrity Program” websites have been using “nonsecure” webpages, meaning they are vulnerable to cyberattacks and malware, including the hacking of any shared personal information.

Davis’ status has been elevated in recent times, being named a year ago as director of the election protection initiative of FreedomWorks, a conservative-libertarian, free market group associated with several dark money right-wing think tanks.

Only months before Davis’ appointment, FreedomWorks named Cleta Mitchell to lead the election project. Mitchell, a former state lawmaker from Oklahoma, was one of Trump’s postelection attorneys in unsuccessfully trying to overturn election results in several states. She was on an infamous phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump asked him to find 11,780 votes.

Mitchell has been heavily involved in many of Trump’s election efforts.

In August 2020, Trump picked Mitchell to prepare for postelection litigation and she chose John Eastman as part of the legal team. Eastman has become known for creating questionable legal theories that Vice President Mike Pence, through his ceremonial role of overseeing the Electoral College vote count of the states on Jan. 6, could keep Trump in power. Shortly after the 2020 election, Mitchell emailed Eastman, asking him to write a memo that would justify the concept of state legislatures creating their own set of Electoral College electors to present to Congress.

Davis, appearing last year before the Three Headed Eagle Alliance, a conservative Kane County group, said she has “been fortunate to work with some of the top election attorneys in the nation,” and called Mitchell a “friend” who she speaks with on a weekly basis.

Davis and Mitchell also are involved in the Election Integrity Network, a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank funded and led by Trump allies, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. NPR has called the Conservative Partnership Institute “the central hub for the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party” and it has held national “election integrity” events in crucial presidential swing states, including at least one featuring Davis.

“The vision I have for everyone is thousands of little brush fires all over the state,” Davis said of various legal tactics that their poll watchers employ. “They can’t put them all out, folks.”

In April, Davis spoke of Mitchell and the Pennsylvania event before a south suburban-based Black conservative religious organization holding a “protect the vote” forum.

“I heard some of what went on in Philadelphia during 2020. I said to the group, ‘You know, I think Chicago and Philadelphia are sister cities. In fact, I think they’re evil twins,” Davis recounted.

Another of Davis’ associates is former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a member of Trump’s 2016 transition team. Blackwell wrote an email read by the U.S. House select committee on the Jan. 6 insurrection that said Pence “would benefit greatly” by meeting with Eastman. Despite intense pressure from Trump, Pence oversaw the electoral vote count that certified Biden as president.

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Davis’ training stresses the use of Freedom of Information Act requests to question local election authorities, usually county clerks, on their election procedures, how they clean voter rolls and to “find out about temporary/seasonal election workers inside election offices. Who are they? Where do they come from?”

She also encourages election judges and poll watchers to document election incidents for potential legal action.

Davis and Bailey have said their efforts are based on the “Virginia model,” where Republicans created local election integrity task forces to recruit poll watchers to rotate through polling places to keep “eyes on every ballot” during last year’s election of GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin over former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

But incidents of intimidation were reported at some polling places in the election as well as disruption of county election procedures, The New York Times reported.

Already, local election officials in Illinois have received FOIAs for voting data requests from a template promoted by Mike Lindell, the My Pillow founder who has claimed without proof that voting systems were hacked to deny Trump reelection.

Election officials, including the Illinois State Board of Elections, also have received letters about a potential lawsuit concerning the 2020 election results and advise the board to retain all records, including paper ballots. But the state elections board does not collect ballots — only local elections officials compile ballots, and no lawsuit has been filed.

Bailey, the GOP nominee, has made recruitment of poll watchers and election judges part of his near daily Facebook Live devotional messages.

To run his campaign’s election integrity program, Bailey hired David Paul Blumenshine, an activist and former radio show host from Normal who attended Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and marched to the U.S. Capitol, but says he and a group of listeners of his conservative radio show did not enter the Capitol. Blumenshine has said he believes Biden won the election.

Bailey, in his Aug. 30 Facebook message, said his campaign identified “2,000 high risk” precincts for potential fraud — which would represent 20% of the state’s 10,000 election precincts and the need to post two poll watchers at each of them.

Unlike election judges, who must be a resident of the county they work, poll watchers picked by a political party can come from anywhere in the state to monitor proceedings.

Bailey’s campaign later said the candidate misspoke and was seeking 2,000 poll watchers to rotate in about 1,000 precincts that had previously shown “ultra high levels” of voter turnout.

“I think the most important thing is to rebuild confidence in our elections because, let’s face it, about 30% of eligible voters aren’t registered,” Bailey said after meeting with the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.

“People just throw their hands up and say, ‘My vote doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter. It’s all fraud,’” he said. “So we need to address that and let people know that no, there’s confidence and that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve been reuniting people with their county clerks, letting them know that hey, the buck stops here.”

One member of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee said the emphasis on election integrity “is messaging to the base but I wish we would get off this stuff. I really do. But people can’t give it up for some reason.”

The committeeman, who asked not to be identified to avoid conflict with other members, said Illinois has “the most transparent, open elections and why people can’t embrace those things is beyond me.”

“They obviously believe the conspiracies, unfortunately, and we unfortunately don’t have enough people in our party standing up to them,” the committeeman said.

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