Investigation Into Election Judge Robocalls Underway
By Chuck Sudo in News on Nov 7, 2014 3:10PM
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s office confirmed Thursday an investigation was launched into a series of robocalls to election judges last weekend that resulted in 20 percent of the city’s election judge pool failing to show up at their assigned polling places on Election Day.
The calls, which Chicago Board of Election Commissioners chief Langdon Neal called “malicious,” allegedly falsely informed judges they had to report for a three-hour training session or could not serve on Election Day and demanded judges vote a certain way in order to serve. An estimated 2,000 election judges didn't show up for work Tuesday. Alvarez spokeswoman Sally Daly said the robocalls are “one of several (complaints) that we are looking into.”
Alvarez’s investigation comes as Mayor Rahm Emanuel demanded the City Council Rules Committee hold hearings to find the persons responsible for the robocalls and whether they were an attempt at electioneering.
"Given . . . that something happened only in the city of Chicago — not anywhere else in the state — we have an obligation . . . to uncover what happened, who sponsored it, how did they get the list, who paid for it and why. There's nothing more important than the integrity of the democratic electoral process. . . . The names and phone numbers are out, acquired in some manner and somebody paid for those calls to create confusion throughout the city of Chicago."
While the robocalls did result in a shortage of election judges they weren’t responsible for keeping 40,000 fewer voters from the polls Tuesday than four years ago.
Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner declared the robocalls “a new dirty trick” and said if the culprits are found they should be “dealt with very harshly."