Picture from DiFranco and Associates Website
This synopsis was written by Char Foss-Eggeman, former Maine Township Republican Committeewoman and former Vice-Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party.
In the 2022 Midterm Election cycle, the Democratic Party and mainstream media effectively labeled anyone who dared to question the security and integrity of the 2020 election as an “election denier” unworthy of participating in public discourse. Yet, two years later, alarming facts continue to surface about 2020, including information about ballot-harvesting operations and government-influenced suppression of free speech through coordination with social media platforms. Election integrity advocates have fought tooth and nail through citizen-led investigation, FOIA actions and lawfare for transparency into such issues, but little attention has been paid to a lawsuit in Cook County challenging the 2020 election where the government itself, quite accidentally, laid bare a massive fraud for all to see.
Republican Frank DiFranco sued the Democratic Cook County Clerk over the results of his 2020 judicial race, and the Clerk produced electronic images of 8,186 Mail-In Ballot (“MIB”) envelopes containing fields that were not properly filled out – yet the ballots inside were still “counted” in violation of election laws. The shocking part of this story is that the Clerk attempted to redact, or black out, the blank envelope fields to hide the invalidity of MIBs. The Clerk’s fraud was only revealed because the blank envelope fields were still visible though the electronic redactions.
Despite the revelation of this fraud, Mr. DiFranco lost his lawsuit in Cook County Court a few months ago. Why? Because the Judge ruled that the fraudulently-redacted MIB envelopes, produced by the County itself, were “private” records.
Mr. DiFranco, a successful suburban attorney, ran for Cook County Judge as a Republican in the November 3, 2020, General Election. Mr. DiFranco led his opponent, Democrat Patricia Fallon, by 10,439 votes on election night. However, Cook County continues to count MIBs received for an additional two weeks before certifying the election.
Mr. DiFranco’s lead slowly dwindled as MIBs trickled in. On November 17th at 5:00 pm, the Cook County Clerk’s website showed that Mr. DiFranco had prevailed by 485 votes.
But it wasn’t over.
From November 21st through December 1st, after the MIB counting deadline had passed, and after the Clerk sent its workers home because there were no more MIBs to count, the Clerk magically added another 5,660 ballots to Fallon’s total, declaring Fallon the surprise winner by 502 votes.
Mr. DiFranco filed suit against the Clerk in the Cook County Court. The Court reluctantly granted Mr. DiFranco a partial discovery recount of MIBs in 20% of the judicial district precincts. The goal of a recount is to establish the number of valid votes for each candidate and then extrapolate from the sample count whether the level of voting irregularities would have changed the election. MIBs are ‘recounted’ by evaluating the MIB envelopes. It is important in a discovery recount to not only count the number of envelopes, but also to evaluate the outside of each envelope to determine if it contained a valid ballot. This is because MIB should only be counted if the envelope contains the voter’s signature, address and the signature of a witness.
At the discovery recount, the Clerk failed to provide all of the MIB envelopes for the selected precincts. The Clerk informed Mr. DiFranco that it was only able to produce the envelopes that were “readily available” without any explanation. Moreover, Mr. DiFranco and his volunteers were only permitted to passively observe the Clerk’s employees flipping through MIB envelopes at lightning speed. Despite Mr. DiFranco’s objections, the Clerk’s employees prevented any meaningful review of outside of the envelopes.
Mr. DiFranco’s volunteers tabulated 3,298 fewer MIB envelopes at the recount than the total number of MIBs certified by the clerk for the selected precincts. Mr. DiFranco filed a Motion for Summary Judgment based on this huge discrepancy.
In a stunning move, the Clerk responded by filing its own Motion for Summary Judgment. The Clerk had suddenly “found” electronic images for all but 455 MIB envelopes, even though the missing envelopes were not produced in the recount.
Mr. DiFranco’s lawyers reviewed and cataloged each MIB envelope image and noticed something extremely odd. About 70% of the images had been partially redacted by the Clerk. Most of the electronic redactions were so poorly done that the full contents of envelope were still visible. Mr. DiFranco and his legal team could see plain as day that the Clerk had attempted to hide blank voter signature fields, blank voter address fields and blank witness signature fields. Every deficient MIB envelope reflected a ballot that should not have been counted in the 2020 election. In total, the Clerk attempted to cover up the counting of 8,186 faulty MIBs.
Mr. DiFranco moved to amend his lawsuit and obtain Summary Judgment based on the cover-up. Cook County Democrats, realizing their massive mistake, immediately circled the wagons.
The Court denied Mr. DiFranco’s request to amend his suit to include information about the incomplete MIB envelopes as “late” because he “should have known” the envelopes were facially defective at the time of the discovery recount – even though he was not granted a meaningful opportunity to review the outside of the envelopes.
The Clerk also complained about the “republication” of voter data in Mr. DiFranco’s Motion – the very same data that the Clerk used in its own Motion. The Clerk further claimed Mr. DiFranco had violated voter privacy by cataloging the deficient MIB envelope fields – despite the lack of any expectation of privacy for information on the outside of a mailed envelope.
The newly-minted Cook County Judge Fallon then piled on, too, joining the Clerk’s opposition against Mr. DiFranco with more arguments about why envelopes are private records.
Not a single word was uttered by either County Judge or the Clerk regarding the government’s active concealment of facial deficiencies on MIB envelopes which had contained counted ballots.
Ultimately, the Court was able to dodge the implications of Mr. DiFranco’s proof. The Clerk provided the Court a fig leaf for this maneuver with a last-minute affidavit from a Clerk’s office employee who swore that the MIB envelope images were legitimate. Mr. DiFranco objected, pointing out that the Clerk’s employee admitted he had never reviewed the physical or electronically-imaged MIB envelopes. No matter. The fraud was ignored, and Mr. DiFranco’s lawsuit was summarily dismissed.
At the end of the day, the Court spared the Clerk’s office from ever having to produce all of the original, non-redacted MIB envelopes in its possession (which it should have under the law’s “best evidence” rule).
Fortunately, Mr. DiFranco continues his fight. He has filed an appeal in the Illinois Courts, as well as a Federal lawsuit (which is stayed pending an outcome in the state proceedings). We can only hope that one of these Courts will have the courage to pull back the curtain on Cook County voter fraud and correct the 2020 election.