There are multiple problems in Republican Primary races in Illinois this year and all of the chaos was preventable.
For DuPage County voters, early voting was suspended on Friday and will not resume until Monday or Tuesday. No Vote-by-Mail ballots have been sent out due to candidate challenges for ballot access. VBM ballots are expected to be in mailboxes by next Saturday or the following week.
On Friday, the election commission was notified that an appellate court ruled that TeDora Brown was authorized to be on the ballot as a Republican candidate for the 11th Congressional District. The 11th CD includes parts of 8 different counties: Cook, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Will, Boone, and DeKalb. The court’s decision to add Brown back to the ballot required DuPage to stop all voting, reprint ballots, and recalibrate machines before voting could continue. Fortunately, no VBM had been sent out. I spoke with a representative from the DuPage Election Commission. I am not aware of what the other counties have done regarding her being on the ballot. More on this later.
In one of those “You Can’t Make This Up” – Voters may want to know that Brown has been indicted, along with her husband, for $742,000 of COVID loan fraud. According to a DOJ press release:
A federal grand jury in Chicago, Illinois, returned an indictment in February, which was unsealed on March 1, charging two suburban Chicago residents with a total of 15 counts of wire fraud for allegedly fraudulently obtaining at least $742,000 in small business loans and grants under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
According to the indictment, beginning around March 2020, and continuing until around March 2021, TE DORA BROWN, 43, of Palos Park, Illinois, and CHRISTOPHER SCOTT, 43, of Hazel Crest, Illinois, participated in a scheme to defraud the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Brown is charged with 13 counts of wire fraud, and Scott is charged with 9 counts.
Each count is punishable with up to 20 years in prison. Brown claims she is not guilty. Her trial date is set for June 22, 2026. Interestingly, in this article by Credit Risk Monitor, “Brown said the federal charges were connected to preschools and schools she formerly owned, including a Naperville Montessori school.” Hmmm…Daycares are apparently easy businesses to create fraud in, just ask the Somalis in Minneapolis, but I digress.
For the record, I support Elburn Mayor Jeff Walter in that race.
DuPage County is sequestering the ballots already cast in the race. No voter is allowed to re-cast a ballot, however.
Three Different Ballots Being Voted in the Republican Primary for Governor.
In the Republican Primary for Governor, two huge problems have surfaced – both of them preventable. In five counties, Lake, Kane, and McHenry, which are the third, fifth, and sixth most populated counties in Illinois, and also the smaller counties of Boone and Ogle, clerks included Joe Severino as a candidate for Republican governor, despite the final ballot certification from the State Board of Elections not including him. These counties have allowed voters to cast ballots that include Severino’s name and continue to do so.
This is a huge mess. Since Severino’s ballot access challenge had not been fully resolved, no county should have allowed voting to begin. And in fact, a number of counties delayed early voting, including Cook County, the most populous county in the state, which accounted for 16.5% of the Republican statewide vote in 2022. Some counties began early voting without Severino’s name on the ballot, and other counties began voting and included Severino on the ballot.
Multiple problems here. First, there is unequal ballot access as some voters (mostly downstate) have a longer access time to voting than in other counties. The two most populous counties have either suspended early voting or will not start early voting until March. Second, there are at least three different ballots circulating in the Republican Primary right now – one with Severino on the ballot, one without Severino, and then the ballot in Champaign County that has Ted Dabrowski’s name spelled wrong.
Champaign County Clerk Misspells Ted Dabrowski on Ballot and Refuses to Fix It.
The clerk put “Tad” on the ballot instead of “Ted” and he is refusing to stop voting and reprint ballots. The Dabrowski campaign is taking legal action to correct the problem, protect any vote cast for “Tad” as voted for “Ted” and force the clerk to do his job by halting voting until correct ballots are printed.
Champaign County has a history of problems in elections. The clerk is Aaron Ammons a convicted felon and the husband of state rep Carol Ammons. Aaron Ammons got a pardon by Gov. Quinn after spending time on probation and then got his record expunged which then made him eligible to run for office. The Edgar County Watchdogs have the entire story at this LINK.
Every issue above was preventable. The State Board of Elections failed in its oversight and guidance job. The SBOE sends out the ballot certification to each clerk. For the Republican Primary race they sent three different certifications with Gregg Moore and Joe Severino listed as pending litigation. Their final certification on January 27, 2026 had only Dabrowski, Mendrick, Bailey, and Heidner on the ballot. They should have held off sending anything to clerks until the court had resolved all issues. They should have also told counties to universally delay early voting the mailing of VBM until all challenges were resolved. Their failure to deliver the right guidance is the proximate cause of the confusion this election cycle.
Another proximate cause, though, is the Democrat push for earlier and more expansive election season. They have extended early voting to nearly six weeks prior to the election. They have pushed VBM and made permanent VBM part of the law. This creates pressure on clerks to comply with the law and get ballots ready before all legal challenges by candidates for ballot access have been exhausted. The Democrats do this because they want a full six weeks to harvest ballots from voters that have been sent a ballot. They know Republicans still prefer to vote in-person and mostly on election day.
We need massive reform to our extremely liberal voting laws in Illinois. The chaos created by six weeks of early voting is on full display and I can only imagine the litigation that is bound to happen over the unequal treatment of voters and candidates described above. The SBOE must change their ballot certification process. What a mess they have created.
In the Republican Primary for Governor, two huge problems have surfaced – both of them preventable. In five counties, Lake, Kane, and McHenry, which are the third, fifth, and sixth most populated counties in Illinois, and also the smaller counties of Boone and Ogle, clerks included Joe Severino as a candidate for Republican governor, despite the final ballot certification from the State Board of Elections not including him. These counties have allowed voters to cast ballots that include Severino’s name and continue to do so.
This is a huge mess. Since Severino’s ballot access challenge had not been fully resolved, no county should have allowed voting to begin. And in fact, a number of counties delayed early voting, including Cook County, the most populous county in the state, which accounted for 16.5% of the Republican statewide vote in 2022. Some counties began early voting without Severino’s name on the ballot, and other counties began voting and included Severino on the ballot.
Multiple problems here. First, there is unequal ballot access as some voters (mostly downstate) have a longer access time to voting than in other counties. The two most populous counties have either suspended early voting or will not start early voting until March. Second, there are at least three different ballots circulating in the Republican Primary right now – one with Severino on the ballot, one without Severino, and then the ballot in Champaign County that has Ted Dabrowski’s name spelled wrong.
Democrats are intent in making it even worse for election integrity. Carol Davis put out this action alert on HB3355
02-13-2026_ACTION ALERT HB 3355
Illinois Conservative Union requests that everyone SHARE & TAKE ACTION.
URGENT: File Witness Slips, select “OPPOSE”, before Tuesday, February 17 at 2PM
Link to file Witness Slips: https://www.ilga.gov/…/3110/22403/CreateWitnessSlip/…
This legislation will turn Illinois into a Universal Vote by Mail state.
Illinois will be like California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. In these states, all voters on the inaccurate voter rolls automatically receive a LIVE BALLOT, EVERY ELECTION without requesting one.
- The IL bill says it’s “optional”: Election Authority “may elect to mail a VBM ballot” to everyone on that election jurisdictions voter rolls – instead of sending any notices and/or applications
- However, it will be a very short step until we see every name on Illinois dirty, inaccurate voter rolls being mailed a LIVE BALLOT for EVERY election.
- If the voter has MOVED or is DECEASED and has not been REMOVED from the voter rolls, that person will receive a LIVE BALLOT.
| On my radio show I discussed the details of the referendum with Chuck Smith who used to work for the township. Listen here: https://youtu.be/kJyqaebvrCE?si=clxN_t4b4msxqbj8 |
IN OTHER NEWS
Where are the Parents?
The student protests continue. They are happening in the city, suburbs, and in more rural areas of the state. I received an email from a lady from Plano, Illinois which said in part the following:
I was so surprised in Plano IL, a community of around 10,000, that had an anti ICE parade of its own at the high school on Friday morning. It began on US route 34 and, when I drove by the rural high school, Mexican flags were flying, held by students and followed by signage with “F….ICE” on them, waved by kids no less. I found the flags offensive but also the signage. I was unprepared for the rage I felt.
These protests are now turning violent. In Aurora a man holding a Trump flag was assaulted. In Lake Zurich a student holding a poster saying he supports ICE was punched by another kid.
Aurora is a failure factory. The protest was apparently attended by students from multiple schools. I imagine that includes students from both Aurora West and Aurora East High Schools.
At Aurora West High School, under Governor Pritzker’s new lower proficiency standards, 44% of students are proficient in English Language Arts (ELA) and 28% proficient in Math. Using the old proficiency standards from 2024, the proficiency is 19% ELA and 16% Math.
At Aurora East 2025 proficiency is 22% ELA, 13% Math. In 2024, it was 10% ELA and 7% Math proficiency.
Obviously, students need to be in school, and parents and taxpayers should be forcing the school district to do better.
We need parents like this dad of a 14-year-old middle school student in the state of Washington to stand up.
Photo from Gov. Pritzker’s Official Facebook Page
On Wednesday, February 18, 2026, Governor Pritzker will give his State of the State and Budget Address in Springfield. With looming deficits, I fully expect him to blame federal government cutbacks for his budget problems. There have already been bills introduced to raise taxes, and I am certain Pritzker will introduce a few more tax and fee hikes. I also expect him to spend a lot of time bashing the Trump administration and ICE enforcement operations.
In the meantime, here’s a story I will be covering on the radio show on Monday and another example of a first-in-the-nation wasteful tax credit Pritzker funded – the Local News Outlet Tax Credit.
Read the story HERE and read the report provided in the story. From the article:
The report, released last Thursday, is a substantive, measured look at early stats and lessons learned from the first year of Illinois’ Local Journalism Sustainability Tax Incentive Program, which created the country’s first refundable tax credits for local news. Rebuild Local News, which “supported and helped design the original legislation,” finds concrete areas for improvement and offers suggestions. But the topline numbers from its analysis demonstrate early success that strikes me as genuinely exciting. In 2025, the program “awarded more than $4 million in tax credits to support more than 260 local journalist jobs at 55 news entities operating more than 120 local outlets across the state: newspapers, digital news sites, broadcasters, commercial and nonprofit newsrooms alike.”
It is another program we should not be funding.