Election Fraud

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: William B. Shipley, et al. v. Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, et al.

Case No.: 17-3511

Officials: BRENNAN, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Election Fraud

Claims of election fraud are not new in Illinois. Plaintiffs William B. Shipley and Katherine Wuthrich were credentialed election monitors in Chicago during the 2016 Illinois primary election and Plaintiff Nina Marie voted in the election. They allege that during the statutorily mandated post-election audit of electronic voting machines, they witnessed rampant fraud and irregularities by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners’ (the “Board”) employees conducting the audit. Plaintiffs filed suit in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging this post-election audit fraud violated their right to vote.

The problem with Plaintiffs’ allegations, however, is that Illinois law expressly precludes the findings of the post-election audit from changing or altering the election results. In other words, no matter how improper the Board employees’ conduct was during the audit, it could not have affected Plaintiffs’ right to vote. For this reason, the district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. And for the same reason, we affirm the district court’s judgment.

Affirmed

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Derek A Hawkins is trademark corporate counsel for Harley-Davidson. Hawkins oversees the prosecution and maintenance of the Harley-Davidson’s international trademark portfolio in emerging markets.