A state appeals panel has closed out an attempt by a Republican lawyer from Park Ridge to overturn the results of Cook County judicial election in which the Republican has accused the Cook County Clerk of using novel Vote by Mail rules to cheat to help a Democrat and former member of her staff eke out a win.
In the Oct. 5 ruling, a three-justice panel said attorney Frank DiFranco has failed to produce enough evidence to demonstrate that a new count of ballots would allow him to overcome the 502-vote margin by which he lost to current Cook County Judge Patricia Fallon.
Even if the court adopted all recount measures desired by DiFranco that the court said were also allowed by law, the appellate justices said “DiFranco fell short of the votes he needed to overcome Fallon’s lead.”
Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough
| Youtube screenshot
“In other words, even giving DiFranco every favorable assumption, he would not surpass Fallon’s vote total,” the justices said. “The necessary conclusion, then, is there is no reasonable likelihood that a recount would change the outcome of the election.”
At that time, he filed parallel lawsuits in both Cook County Circuit Court and federal district court.
In both actions, DiFranco asserted Yarbrough’s office had violated his rights and election law by essentially using the state’s new Vote By Mail system to allow Fallon to claim an election that DiFranco says he actually won.
The federal case remains pending, as the judge awaited the outcome of the state law challenge, in which DiFranco sought a court order either declaring him the winner or directing election authorities to conduct a new count of the ballots.
DiFranco had been the Republican nominee for a seat in Cook County Circuit Court’s 12th Judicial Subcircuit, which covers much of Cook County’s northwest suburbs, including Maine Township, Elk Grove Township and Wheeling Township.
He was opposed by Democratic nominee Fallon.
Fallon had served as chief of human resources in the Cook County Recorder of Deeds’ office at the time Yarbrough held the Recorder’s office. Fallon continued in that post from 2017 until she was appointed to the Cook County bench by the Illinois Supreme Court in 2019.
Yarbrough was elected Cook County Clerk in 2018, at which time the Clerk’s office, at the direction of voters, absorbed the functions and much of the staff of the Recorder’s office.
According to DiFranco’s complaint, vote tallies demonstrated he should have won on Nov. 17, the date two weeks following Election Day, when the law sets a deadline for Yarbrough’s office and other election authorities to stop counting ballots.
Yarbrough, however, continued counting mail-in ballots received by her office until Nov. 22. The results of the continued count allowed Fallon to surpass DiFranco’s totals, and she was ultimately declared the winner by 502 votes.
A Cook County judge rejected DiFranco’s claims concerning the continued counting, agreeing with Yarbrough’s position that the deadline is not “mandatory” under state law, but merely “directory.”
Election officials are free to disregard the deadline, the judge said, to continue counting votes.
After months of further proceedings, Cook County Circuit Judge Patrick T. Stanton also granted summary judgment to Yarbrough and her fellow defendants on DiFranco’s further claims that Yarbrough had cheated him out of his win by also counting VBM ballots that should have been disallowed over potential mismatched signatures, missing or mismatched required return envelopes and other technical issues.
DiFranco appealed. But the appellate justices said the only scenario under which DiFranco could still pull ahead of Fallon involved a “method for allocating disqualified votes” that the Cook County judge and the appellate justices agreed would have been considered “novel” and not allowed under Illinois election law or prior judicial precedent.
The appeals court affirmed the Cook County court’s judgment.
The decision was authored by Justice LeRoy K. Martin Jr; justices Mary K. Rochford and Thomas E. Hoffman concurred.
Yarbrough and her co-defendants were represented by attorney Michael J. Kasper, of Kasper & Nottage, who has longstanding connections to many of the most powerful Democrats in Chicago and Illinois, including decades of service as counsel for the Illinois Democratic Party under indicted former House Speaker and Illinois Democratic Party Chairman Michael J. Madigan.
Yarbrough and her fellow defendants have also been represented by attorneys Steven M. Laduzinsky and Natalie K. Wilkins, of the Laduzinsky & Associates, of Chicago.
DiFranco has been represented by attorneys Kenneth A. Michaels Jr., of Bauch & Michaels, of Chicago.