AG: DuPage County Election Commission Violated FOIA; Must Provide Voting Machine Serial Numbers –

DuPage Co., IL. (ECWd) –

Fifty (“50”) months after my FOIA request for records of the now-dissolved DuPage County Election Commission, the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor has issued a Determination Letter.

This was a FOIA request sent to the Commission prior to current DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek took office and was an effort to further verify information of DuPage County Election Commission’s purchase of used and cast-off voting machines from the dissolved Aurora Election Commission.

In the Determination, the AG confirmed that the DuPage County Election Commission violated the Freedom of Information Act when it did not provide the serial numbers of certain voting machines pursuant to a FOIA request I submitted in October of 2018.

“This office has reviewed the information submitted by the Commission and finds that the Commission has not met its burden of demonstrating that disclosure of the serial numbers of the voting machines would jeopardize the security of the election system or data. The Commission has not provided evidence to demonstrate how serial numbers could be used to access the system or its data, reveal details about the system’s security, or otherwise expose the security of the election system to risk. The Commission’s confidential arguments are too speculative to satisfy the Commission’s burden of establishing by clear and convincing evidence that disclosure of the serial numbers would jeopardize the election system or related data. While this office recognizes the vital importance of safe and secure elections, in this instance, the Commission has not established that the disclosure of the serial numbers would endanger its election system. Accordingly, this office requests that the Commission provide Mr. Kraft with an un-redacted version of the record that reflects the responsive serial numbers.”

The AG’s office did confirm the Commission could properly withhold the user manual, service tag numbers, and machine names.