With a seat in the Illinois State House hanging in the balance, one of Illinois’ top Republican state lawmakers has accused DuPage County election officials of not following the law in how they are validating signatures as they count mail-in ballots, and is asking a DuPage County judge to step in.
Late in the day on Nov. 14, State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi, R-Elmhurst, filed suit in DuPage County court against DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek.
In the court action, Mazzochi is asking a judge to grant a temporary restraining order, shutting down further counting of mail-in ballots until Kaczmarek can demonstrate her office is correctly counting ballots.
Mazzochi is currently locked in a tight race with Elmhurst Democrat Jenn Ladisch Douglass for State Representative from the 45th District. The newly drawn district in far eastern DuPage County hugs the DuPage-Cook county line, and runs roughly north-south from Elmhurst to Hinsdale.
According to unofficial vote totals posted by the DuPage County Clerk’s office late in the afternoon on Nov. 14, Ladisch holds a 207 vote lead over Mazzochi, with more than 42,000 votes counted.
That lead is almost entirely the result of the counting of mail-in ballots. On Election Night, Mazzochi held the edge in the closely divided district. But Douglass caught Mazzochi up and then passed her, as the DuPage Clerk’s office continued to count mail-in ballots in the days following Election Day, Nov. 8.
According to Mazzochi’s complaint, mail-in ballots could account for about 20% of all ballots cast in the election.
However, Mazzochi’s lawsuit accuses the Clerk’s office of being sloppy, at best, in how it is counting those mail-in ballots.
Specifically, the complaint accuses the Clerk’s office of not following the procedures spelled out in Illinois state election law for verifying signatures on the mail-in ballots, to prove the ballots have been cast legally, by the voter whose name is on the ballot.
Illinois law requires election officials to compare the signatures on mail-in ballots against the signatures of voters, as they appear in voter registration records. If the signatures do not match, the election officials are required to reject the ballots, and contact the voter to give them the opportunity to prove their ballot was legally cast.
Mazzochi, however, claims she and others of her team have witnessed multiple occasions in which Clerk Kaczmarek’s team has instead compared ballot signatures against signatures on mail-in ballot applications, not the official voter registration records.
Further, Mazzochi claims DuPage County election judges have chosen not to follow the official ballot verification process, and instead have looked at “additional electronic information, such as the vote by mail application, to ‘verify’ the signature.”
“… The DuPage County Clerk is not properly verifying mail-in ballots…,” Mazzochi says in her complaint. “Only electronically-scanned portions of the mail-in-ballots are being reviewed, also electronically, by the election judges for signature verification.
“In some cases, the mail-in ballot signatures are not being substantively verified at all.
“… As a result, mail-in ballots are being verified in violation of the Election Code and counted as votes in the 2022 general election – including for the election of Illinois State House of Representatives District 45,” Mazzochi’s complaint said.
The lawsuit notes the mail-in ballots are being allegedly illegally verified regardless of voters’ possible partisan identification.
However, in other court proceedings, Illinois Democratic leaders have stated they believe mail-in voting is essential element of their election victories. Democrats are actively resisting efforts to place limits on the counting of such mail-in ballots, and under Illinois law, voters are allowed to submit mail-in ballots without a postmark or any kind of independent verification that they have been legally cast.
Under Illinois law, election officials are required to count mail-in ballots that are received up to 14 days after the official Election Day, as the law presumes those mail-in ballots were simply slow to be delivered by the US Postal Service.
In a separate lawsuit, Republicans have asserted that two-week mail-in ballot receipt period violates federal law. That lawsuit remains pending; a federal judge is expected to rule in early December on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Mazzochi has served in the state House of Representatives since 2018, when she was elected in the former 47th District, which included much of the same geography as the new 45th District. Mazzochi was chosen in 2021 by her fellow Republican members of the state House as assistant minority party leader.
Kaczmarek is a Democrat. She has served in that office since 2018, when she was elected amid a Democratic wave that saw Democrats win big in DuPage County for the first time in modern memory.
In the two elections since, Democrats have also performed strongly in DuPage County, a traditional Republican suburban stronghold.
Mazzochi’s lawsuit asks the judge to block the DuPage County Clerk from “verifying or certifying any vote by mail ballots, or at the very least vote by mail ballots processed between November 2-November 10 until such time as they can be properly verified as required by law.”
Further, Mazzochi asks the court to block the DuPage County Clerk “from presenting to any election judge reviewing vote-by-mail ballots any signature sample beyond those signatures that the voter used to register to vote.”And Mazzochi has asked the court to order the DuPage County Clerk to sequester and preserve all mail-in ballots and prevent the Clerk from destroying or discarding any of the information used by election judges to allegedly verify signatures on mail-in ballots.
In an emailed statement, Mazzochi said: “If this isn't handled right, you can't ensure that the voter assigned to a ballot is the one who actually votes it by mail.
“I wasn't willing to trust accusations or third hand information. The Clerk's office even gave a DuPage County state's attorney the impression that they weren't doing this. I needed to see for myself. Sadly, it was true. I saw this happen over and over and over,” Mazzochi said.
“I filed suit today to ensure that the DuPage County Clerk's office actually follows the law. Every person on the ballot, and every person who wants to vote by mail legally, deserves that.”
Mazzochi is represented in the case by attorneys Christopher Esbrook and Michael Kozlowski, of Esbrook P.C., of Chicago.
Neither Kaczmarek nor a DuPage County spokesperson immediately responded to requests for comment left Monday evening by The Cook County Record.
Kaczmarek also was apparently reelected this year, and received about 53% of the vote countywide, besting Republican challenger Evelyn Sanguinetti, according to unofficial vote totals.