About the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project
Welcome to the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project — a non-partisan, non-profit public interest organization that is dedicated to supporting free, fair and accurate elections in Illinois, and has been working towards that goal for nearly two decades.
Since it was established in 2004 and received nonprofit status in 2006, the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project (IBIP) has been a strong and persistent advocate for electoral process reform. Our all-volunteer members are dedicated to assessing the deficiencies of electronic voting, to promoting clean elections, and to encouraging meaningful audits of electronic voting. Our organization continues to seek full transparency in the electoral process, full competence in its operations, and full accountability in its results. These issues involve professionalism and public trust, not partisan politics. The future of fair and accurate elections in Illinois – and of public confidence in our electoral process itself – is at stake!
Can we trust the result of our elections?
Is “Election Integrity” a radical new problem in our nation’s system of democratic elections? No, of course it’s not, as anyone familiar with American electoral history can surely attest. BUT within the last two decades, the issue has been gaining new traction, with signs of more trouble ahead if we do not address these issues firmly.
Since the introduction of computerized voting systems in the 2002 U.S. General Election, concerned voters have noticed highly irregular and increasingly alarming election results. is becoming more widespread, more sophisticated . . and much more alarming.
Pre-election and post-election tracking polls no longer agreed with “official election results “generated by newly installed computerized election systems outcomes in key U.S. senate and gubernatorial races.
-Tom Stoppard
2002 – 2004 US Election Outcomes Required Further Scrutiny
After the 2002 and 2004 General Elections concerned voters became election integrity activists and began close examination of the U.S. Election System. What they discovered in state after state and county after county were the following:
- A critical lack of external, independent review, throughout the election process.
- Serious chain-of- custody weaknesses involving insecure storage of ballots, voting machines computer memory cards and other key election documents.
- Election recount systems that were expensive, slow, insecure and sometimes inaccurate.
- Election systems controlled by partisan elected secretary of state officials in Ohio, Georgia, and Florida.
- Few media outlets investigated allegations of election fraud of the 2002 and 2004 elections
- Political parties after the 2002-2004 elections failed to point out election system irregularities and security weaknesses to the media and the public.
- Computerized election systems were produced, programmed and maintained by corporations with strong political ties to one political party.
As a result of these discoveries, a group of concerned Illinois voters began to meet regularly in the City of Chicago in 2004. These election integrity activists created IBIP, a non-partisan organization committed to identify workable solutions to election system weaknesses in Illinois.