* Claypool Supporters File Lawsuit to Ensure Fair Early Voting

Claypool calls on legal officials to step up efforts to monitor polling places

Responding to reports of problems with the state’s new early voting process, attorneys for voters supporting Forrest Claypool’s campaign for Cook County Board President today announced they are filing suit in United States Federal Court seeking to provide additional polling stations and uniform weekend voting hours in the suburbs.

At a news conference with attorneys Martin Oberman, Tom Geoghegan and Judson Miner, Claypool and the attorneys noted that a seemingly arbitrary list of voting locations in Chicago has left out large areas of the city. Also, many suburban early voting sites are not open on weekends. The lawsuit filed by his campaign is designed to rectify this imbalance.

Even more troubling, Claypool said that his campaign workers already have observed apparent violations of election law at numerous early voting stations. These include incidents of elections officials debating the need to follow normally accepted procedures and individuals reaching over the shoulders of elderly voters and touching the voting screen without documenting their assistance to the voters.

In addition, a review of daily voter reports from the Chicago Board of Elections show several cases in which voters appear to have voted twice.

Claypool said that calls from his campaign to the legal agencies that normally police the polling places revealed that none of them are staffing field operations for the 18 days of early voting.

“A representative of the U.S. Attorney’s Office told our campaign manager that his office simply didn’t have the resources to monitor 156 polling places for 19 days,” Claypool explained, adding that his staff was told the State’s Attorney has the same constraints.

“The General Assembly erred by not accompanying its legislation for early voting with the funding necessary to ensure that early voting stations were properly supervised,” Claypool said. “But that oversight shouldn’t be compounded by allowing clear violations to go unchecked.”

”I’m hoping our lawsuit will compel election officials to provide equal protection by making early voting opportunities available and accessible to all communities across the county,” Claypool said. “And I hope our appeal to the U.S. Attorney, Attorney General and State’s Attorney will result in adequate oversight of all the early polling stations in Cook County, so that illegal acts can be prevented and voters can be confident in the result.”

Blognotes: A reader asked me to "Blog Alert" this story. She mentioned.....>" It's terrible that they just picked places on a map without considering if they're close to public Transit hubs! So only people who drive can vote early? "

What, not near public transit hubs? Isn't that a story for the CTA tattle-tale Kevin O'Neil? What do other's think?