Republican Lake County Clerk Willard Helander broke down in tears Tuesday while defending her office against allegations that it has mishandled the processing of hundreds of voter-registration forms from Democratic voting areas in the county.
“When you impugn the integrity of the county clerk’s office and the fantastic staff in it, we are obligated, and the state’s attorney blessed the fact, we must tell you what’s really going on,” Helander said during a news conference outside her office in the County Building in Waukegan.
The clerk’s emotional remarks followed accusations that her office has failed to process nearly 600 registration forms submitted before Tuesday’s deadline for participation in the Nov. 7 general election.
“This office is working very hard to have a fair election where every person who wants to be registered is registered. We absolutely want to see that happen. But we also want to know that the election is free of fraud and we also want you to know this staff does not deserve the treatment [it has received] in the name of a political attack,” Helander said.
State Sen. Terry Link (D-Vernon Hills), who chairs the Lake County Democratic Party, publicly criticized Helander last week after inspecting voter-registration material maintained by the clerk’s office.
Besides accusing the clerk’s office of mishandling hundreds of voter-registration applications, Link accused Helander of intentionally intimidating African-American and Hispanic residents in an effort to keep registration down.
“It’s amazing that the only people that are being targeted are those in [minority communities] like Waukegan and North Chicago,” Link said Tuesday after the clerk’s news conference. “She is totally disenfranchising voters.”
The fireworks between Link and Helander were ignited last month when Helander shut down registration efforts at a church in Waukegan. U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), state Rep. Susan Garrett (D-Lake Forest) and several other Democratic candidates had spoken previously at a political rally inside the church.
Helander, who said she attended the church rally at the invitation of church leaders, informed the elected officials that Illinois law barred them from registering voters while engaging in a political rally.
“The law reads you do not have a voter-registration rally in the middle of a political rally,” Helander said Tuesday. “I turned to the keynote speaker, and said, `Congressman, what you just did was prohibited by law.’ End of subject. There was no threat. There was no intimidation.
“It was particularly disturbing that the people who were participating in those activities are very intelligent people who pass laws for us to follow. For me to sit in that room and hide my eyes and say I didn’t see it would have been to deny the oath I took.”
Helander’s office also advised students at the College of Lake County in Grayslake to suspend a recent voter-registration drive at the school because it was being held on the same day that several Democratic Party candidates were visiting the campus. Helander’s move prompted vocal protests from officials at the Lake County League of Women Voters.
But even worse than what Helander interpreted to be illegal electioneering is what she said is fraud being conducted by Democratic-sponsored election aides.
The aides, paid by the Illinois Democratic Party to register voters, have brought in registration forms filled with questionable information that the clerk’s office cannot verify, Helander said. She added that some of the aides have filled in false information on the forms in front of personnel in her office.
“This is what happens when you have a registration drive driven by a need to get a paycheck,” Helander said.
The clerk also said she believed Link had issued his attack against her office because she has forwarded the names of several election aides to the state’s attorney’s office for possible prosecution.
“Now that they know they’ve been caught, they want to tar and feather all the people who are trying to do their job so when there’s some investigation concluded, they can say it was all political,” she said.
Link, however, said he wasn’t fearful of the investigation.
“No one has been violating the law over by us, but she wants to make it look like it,” he said.
