“The law is only as effective as the people who respect it.”
My Civil Duty 2025
To give a government unit any measure of legitimacy, various documents are created to lend credibility to such a notion.
From municipal code books and by-laws, as well as agendas and other document formations, these records are crucial to ensuring a government unit is operating within the realm of legality and legitimacy.
When members of local government units dismiss and disregard the laws governing their actions, the public at large has real reason to not just see through the illusions put forth by the public servants to disguise and hide their wrongful actions, but they have real rights to not just demand compliance by the government unit, but at the least cost to the taxpayer.
The voting record of elected and appointed government officials through the keeping and subsequent publishing of meeting minutes rightfully could…and should…influence each and every local election across the nation.
For example, one Library District in Illinois seems to have had the opportunity 8 times over 19 years to appoint someone to a vacancy.
The illusions start with missing meeting minutes allegedly containing the votes by library officials were never published to their website. Their inconsistent publishing habits lends itself to the question of why, but each public document blackout occurred over an elongated period of time as well as documents designed to support the idea that an appointment actually happened.
With this real life example, a now-fired Library Director ended up signing a document that only the Secretary of the Board had authority to sign relating to a vacancy and false information was put to the form and then filed with the State. The person who took over the vacancy is still ballot banned by the State* and was eventually voted to be Vice President of the Library Board. His wife, the Treasurer of the organization, remains on the same library board as she was voted to a 6 year term. Oh the headlines I could have written in 2024…
The pursuit of securing a seat at the Table of Local Politics has always been fraught with paths filled with darkness and illusions of light. Retired as I will stay, I hope this new update to My Civil Duty reflects thoughts and opinions on the local election processes across the nation, not just in Illinois. Circumstances created in one State does not mean they cannot be re-created elsewhere, via good, bad or just plain illegal actions and coordinated activities.
So while my use of words like “election interference” will inevitably take on a wide variety of definitions from the predefined understandings you have acquired over the years, perhaps the information on this website can and will help others constructively serve and protect our system of electing those who will lead us for a period of time.
Lack of information about elections interferes with an election. In Illinois, we have an election coming up in 2025. While I am never certain just how much will go onto any website I create, I am certain that I will still be paying attention and speaking up about the critical value of the beginning of the election process…not just the end when people go to vote. Hundreds of web pages listing phone numbers and hotlines to report issues related to a voter engaging in their part of the process.
Not one makes it clear who to report a Local Election Authority for election interference, other than the courts and paid for by someone performing their civil duty of reporting election interference in the first place.
It ain’t that way when it comes to the voting part…
From start to finish, there must be oversight of all parts of the process.
Period.
Never the end of discussion.
*The State of Illinois has authority to ban someone or a group of people from having their names on any ballot for a variety of reasons. In this case, two people were banned from the ballot due to failure to file financial reports in a timely manner and the subsequent fines that hit the $40,000.00 point mid-2024. The letter banning them from the ballot is available online, but most don’t think of checking for a ballot ban when examining the nomination papers submitted to a Local Election Authority for placement on the next election’s ballot. It is a valid and legal reason to invalidate a candidate’s nomination papers, but trying to figure out who to report what to when it comes to issues like candidate fraud, election interference, dereliction of duty by a Local Election Official and/or a Local Election Authority, etc.