FBI Investigates Rock Island (IL) County Clerk Richard "Dick" Leibovitz; Son Loses Race on Feb. 2nd

Illinois FBI Investigators are inquiring into the criminal activities of retiring Rock Island County Clerk Richard Leibovitz, actions that allegedly occurred while he supervised 7 employees in the county clerk's office in Rock Island, Illinois for the past 24 years. (January 14, 2010 (edtibbits@qctimes.com, www.qconline.com ). Leibovitz had been in office since 1986. The current investigation stems from Mr. Leibovitz's serving as President of companies he founded and profited from without disclosing this fact, in violation of Illinois laws on income disclosure for elected officials.

INVESTIGATION OF COUNTY CLERK (Rock Island County, IL)

Public records show that Richard "Dick" Leibovitz is registered with the Illinois Secretary of State as President of American Election Systems, Inc. Public servants are required to disclose any income over $1,250 from outside interests, yet he did not. (My own husband was a member of the East Moline Housing Authority for two terms, which offered no payment. He still was required to file such documents.)

Long-time public servant Mr. Leibovitz never disclosed his relationship as President of American Elections System, Inc. on the required forms, signing "none" on multiple forms filed over multiple years. Brad Ware of the Illinois FBI office would neither confirm nor deny reports of the investigation into illegal practices in the Rock Island (Illinois) County Clerk's office.

According to its website, Leibovitz's company markets anAuto Poll Book. It is described as a computerized tool to make it easier for election officials to look up voters. Whether federal HAVA money was used to develop the Auto Poll Book will be determined during the federal investigation. This would almost certainly be viewed as an abuse of power as it would be a misuse of the federal money distributed to local county clerks in an effort to help them make their offices more efficient, not federal money distributed to help those county clerks fund businesses from which they would personally profit, an abuse of power.

With or without wrongdoing, the appearance of impropriety when you are in charge of counting votes in elections is important to avoid. Mr. Leibovitz surely must have realized that, even if it were legal to use federal funds to pay for a private temp firm's workers, having them write program code for a voter computer program that you were planning to market and sell for your personal profit, would not look good to the public that elected you nor inspire public trust. In fact, it would be wrong.Yet,it appears that Mr. Leibovitz disregarded common sense and good judgment and moved forward, personally profiting from Auto Poll Book. It is difficult to fathom a 24-year elected official not knowing he was skating on thin ice in moving forward with his plan to market his Auto Poll device, yet one of Leibovitz's high school classmates told me, "He just didn't know it was wrong." Seems implausible that Mr. Leibovitz would not suspect such actions could be illegal and, if he was not sure, why not ask the County Attorney for an opinion? A "consultant" who was paid large sums of Rock Island (Illinois) county money (James Harmening) was, coincidentally, the secretary of Mr. Leibovitz's company, American Elections System, Inc.

There are invoices bearing Chris Leibovitz's name and checks written to American Elections, Inc. dated between April and October of 2008, although the company was allegedly dissolved on September 7, 2007.

According to the Davenport, Iowa Quad City Times (1/14), state records list three officers and directors for American Election Systems, Inc.: Richard Leibovitz; his son Christopher of Lenox, Illinois (listed as director); and James Harmening of Orland Park, Illinois, company secretary.

Harmening is also president of a Chicago-based information technology company called Computer Bits, Inc., which has provided "consulting services" to the County Clerk's office. Computer Bits, Mr. Harmening's company, was paid $48,969 since 2008 by Rock Island County, including $35,280 in federal grant funds (Jan. 14, Moline, Illinois, Dispatch).

Neighboring counties in Illinois (Bureau, Henry) have purchased the software Mr. Leibovitz's firm developed, possibly as a result of Leibovitz's promotional efforts or recommendation.

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY RACE of FEB. 2, 2010 for COUNTY CLERK (Rock Island County, Illinois)

During the heat of a three-way race for the Rock Island County Clerk's seat, a race between Larry Toppert, Nick Leibovitz (son of the incumbent), and Karen Kinney, [ultimately won by Kinney in the February 2^nd Democratic primary], the local newspapers headlined the news that Liebovitz has been profiting mightily during his twenty-four years as County Clerk.

Son Nick, who works in the County Clerk's office (Dad fired a female employee to make room for him), had been using campaign signs with just his surname in his bid to succeed his father, which angered some. But that was just the tip of the iceberg and, while intentionally misleading, was not necessarily illegal.

On February 2^nd, county voters rejected both Nick Leibovitz, (who basically ended up in charge of supervising his own election in the race against challengers Larry Toppert and Karen Kinney after Dad's fall from grace) and accuser Larry Toppert. It was Toppert's daughter, working within a Chicago firm that specializes in uncovering corruption, who learned of most of the information that has led to FBI charges. However, Deb Toppert told me during a phone conversation that she and her husband did not turn the information over to the authorities. [That honor, she said, belonged to another.]

VOTER FRAUD/IRREGULARITY in 2005 Rock Island (IL) County PRIMARY ELECTION

Newspaper articles of January 14, 2010, in the Davenport (IA) Quad City Times and the Moline (IL) Dispatch described the software Leibovitz was selling as useful in "targeting" certain voters. Regardless of Richard "Dick" Leibovitz's guilt or innocence of these recent federal charges, he was in charge of supervising elections in Rock Island County during the (Democratic County Chairman) John Gianulis days, to make sure that those elections, at least those held over the past 24 years, were fair and unbiased. Leibovitz certainly seemed to go out of his way to make elections come out the way the Democratic County chairman wanted them to come out.

My personal experience suggests that Mr. Leibovitz did not make sure that the employees under his supervision gave fair competent treatment to candidates, but, rather, worked overtime to do just the opposite. I say this as someone who experienced that treatment firsthand, up close and personal, delivered by an arrogant public servant in an unkind, uncooperative, and....[if the FBI charges stick]...corrupt manner.

Richard Leibovitz didn't feel it was necessary to help a first-time candidatee (i.e., me) in any way, shape or form in the 2005 Democratic primary election. I challenged long-time incumbent 1^st Ward Alderwoman (and Gianulis protégé) Helen Heiland and, as John Gianulis had said, to my face, "I'll make sure that you can't possibly win." When I asked why I could not possibly win, he did not give the real reasons, of course, but said, "You weren't born here and you don't belong to a union." I didn't feel it would be a good time to mention that I had actually been responsible for achieving recognition for the SEA (Silvis Education Association), instrumental in calling in the League of Women Voters' to see that we had an election to ratify our union, the SEA, as the official bargaining group for the teachers of our district, way back in 1979.

Richard "Dick" Leibovitz gave me inaccurate information on the phone about how to challenge a vote I knew to be bogus. The vote was announced in the newspapers the morning after a very close primary election that had suddenly changed dramatically overnight. The incumbent's win was announced as a "fait accompli" in the morning papers. Yet no less an authority than State Senator Denny Jacobs had congratulated me on my "upset" victory at a victory party at midnight the night before, telling me that my upset win was on the Internet website that politicians live and die by. But by morning, the local papers were announcing "business as usual:" a 10-vote win for the incumbent. Very curious. And so tidy.

Absentee Votes and the "Law of Proportionate Reduction" in Illinois

I ran against 1^st Ward (East Moline) Alderperson Helen Heiland [in 2005] on a one-time-only pledge to the then-incumbent Mayor Joe Moreno to try to help him move the city forward. Ms. Heiland opposed any measure that seemed progressive, seemed slightly dim at times in meetings (from which she was often absent) and had opposed Joe's efforts to, for example, establish a Farmer's Market downtown that would double as a social meeting place for the many Hispanic residents. Joe was feeling frustrated with the "same old/same old" of trying to get any measure past Helen Heiland. I agreed to oppose her in the 1^st Ward, but did not agree to make it my Life's Calling, as Mrs. Heiland has done. One term, maximum, I said. And only one try.

All my former students were there, urging me on enthusiastically. "What did it cost you to run, Louis?" I asked then-alderman Louis Moreno, a former student. "Only about $300," he said. I figured I could foot that bill myself, and did. Little did I know that this would turn into a $10,000 fiasco, as, at that point, I just wanted to prove that the election had been "fixed" and to keep future candidates from suffering the same unfair treatment I had received.

I honestly did not care, then or now, whether I won the election: I just wanted the citizens of Rock Island County to be informed by the local newspapers about what was going on under their noses. But that didn't happen. The (Moline, IL) Dispatch reporter (Jenny Lee) was present and wrote nothing of the incorrect tally, even though she was present during the vote. The (Davenport, IA) Times didn't even have a reporter present for the recount. So much for "going to the newspapers" to expose fraud, as we all see in movies like "Three Days of the Condor" or 'All the President's Men." (Only in the movies.)

There were numerous documented irregularities in the election. In fact, Democratic insiders (who know the story to be true) told me at the DNC in Denver, on condition of anonymity, that it was quite well known (behind-the-scenes) that strings were pulled to defeat me, when it became apparent I had actually won. I was described as being "collateral damage" in the attempts to unseat Jose "Joe" Moreno, the incumbent Mayor. Absentee votes were the weapon of choice, although there were also irregularities at both polling places, (including 3 people entering the voter's booth together, in one instance.)

I had run as a newcomer to politics, an idealistic naïve person who thought that elections in Rock Island County, Illinois would be run fairly. I soon found out differently, as I went door-to-door speaking with every single absentee vote cast (38 of them) and uncovering fraud at many levels, including a non-existent male voter at one duplex in East Moline wherethe young girl who answered my question about whether someone with this name had voted absentee from this address told me, "Oh, nobody by that name lives here. Only my mom and I live here, and she wouldn't vote absentee because she works for (County Chairman) John Gianulis at the Courthouse." It's amazing how open people are if you approach them and say, " You don't have to tell me how you voted, but, if you don't mind, would you tell me whether you voted for Helen Heiland or me?" I think I was turned down once and once only.

Then there were the people I discovered had been bussed in from a retirement home that is not in my district (two of them the parents of the man who was then Kaplan College's President). And, saddest of all, there were the voters whose absentee ballots were secured while they were dying or close to death.

How the Powers-that-Be Control the Outcomes of Challenges

When I decided to challenge, I had to work with the County Clerk's office. First, Mr. Leibovitz gave me incorrect information about how much time I had to file a challenge. I was told in a phone call to come file much later than the deadline. ("Come down around the end of March.") Luckily, I followed my instincts and went down immediately.

When I showed up, in person, to secure the necessary paperwork, the form was mysteriously unavailable. The clerks offered to "mail it" to me. They said they had to "retype" it. I told them I'd retype the form myself. It was after this that I really learned how far the powers-that-be would go to defeat someone that then- Democratic County Chairman Gianulis had decided was not going to be allowed to win. (He had told me this to my face during a meeting suggested by Dennis Jacob's sister-in-law, Wanda Jacobs, wife of Don Jacobs).

Wanda Jacobs had told me that telling the County Democratic Chairman you were going to run was " a courtesy." I regret that "courtesy." It turned out to be a strategical mistake. I should have kept my intentions to run quiet for as long as possible. They were gunning for me, and once I announced, I became collateral damage in the plan to defeat incumbent Mayor Joe Moreno, supposedly to "teach him a lesson."

Personally, I think there was fear that Mayor Moreno's popularity would make him a natural choice to replace Denny Jacobs as an Illinois State Senator when the elder Jacobs retired. (Denny's father, Oral "Jake" Jacobs had been State Senator before him.) Joe Moreno's popularity might eclipse that of the son (Mike Jacobs) the father planned to deed his seat to, and that wouldn't do.

I did not run "with" Joe Moreno. I ran on my own with a Children's Crusade of helpers (my daughter, her boyfriend and some of their friends). I paid for everything myself. I went door-to-door in my ward 3 times, even though it is not the safest of places to be walking, alone, after dark. (An unsolved murder near my house had just happened; it remains unsolved to this day.)

I was able to file the correct paperwork with the corrected statutes, no thanks to the office of the County Clerk of Rock Island County. All charges for the Discovery (which was relatively inexpensive at around $75, and, after that, $500 for the subsequent court-ordered recount, came out of my pocket. Cash only. Lawyer fees: $8,000.) Cost to actually run: probably around $500. Total to try to let the voters of Rock Island County know that their elections aren't a whole lot "cleaner" than Cook County's? Approximately $10,000...and neither newspaper reported the recount or covered the story or found this seething corruption until it was handed to them on a silver platter, courtesy of a Toppert daughter's contacts.

And make no mistake: you must provide specific addresses, names and instances of wrongdoing to secure a recount, which was, in my case, ordered by a Republican judge. Otherwise, the entire request is thrown out of court and there is no recount. (Had there been a recount in the recent Illinois Governor's race, $10,000 would have been required from the challenger to pay for it, coming out of the challenger's pocket. Although the race was close, there was no recount in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.)

ABSENTEE BALLOTS

All election experts in the state whom I consulted told me I must gain access to the absentee ballots because "that's where they always cheat." Mr. Leibovitz refused to show me the list of absentee voters (where the cheating mainly takes place) and made this verbal refusal while television cameras turned. Ultimately, I had to hire Nelson, Keys and Keys Law Firm of Rock Island, Illinois---the only firm brave enough to take the case on--- and get a court order to secure the absentee voters' names. Then, I had to be the entire "investigative team," a team of one.

I was given credit for far fewer absentee votes than I had actually garnered. I knew this to be the case simply because of the number of my own immediate family members who had voted absentee for me that day, not to mention neighbors who had told me, personally, that they had voted for me. The nice, neat 10 vote margin of defeat announced in the Quad City Times screamed "Fix!" and the announcement of the absentee vote total only confirmed that suspicion.

Therefore, I set out to let others know that this dishonesty was rampant in Rock Island County elections. Surely Dispatch reporter Jenny Lee, who stood there and watched as the votes were recounted and came out ahead for the challenger would write a line or two to appear in the Illinois paper? But, no, she did not.

How the Deck is Stacked Against a Challenger

Once one candidate or the other is announced as "the winner," the opposing team must have a team standing by, ready to challenge, with lawyers on board and a willingness to spend much more than the election, itself, cost to run. I have learned this after the fact. Otherwise, the archaic and unfair Illinois laws such as the "Law of proportionatereduction," where, for each fraudulent vote you discover and document, one vote is taken away from the wrongdoer and one vote is taken away from you, will conspire against the challenger. County clerks don't want to have to put together last-minute ballots, so the system works overtime to deny challengers a fair shake.

If lying to the challenger about deadlines to file for discovery doesn't work (it didn't, in my case), then, by all means, delay them with "We'll have to mail that form to you," or "We'll have to re-type that and get back to you," Or, failing that, give the challenger forms with the wrong statutes typed on them, which happened to me. Was this incompetence in the Rock Island, Illinois, County Clerk's office intentional or accidental? What do you think?

After a discovery motion was filed, the incumbent was actually proven to have lost the popular vote in my case, although not in the mayoral race. [It's never a good sign when you leave your own "victory" party in tears, as my opponent did.]

It was the rigged absentee ballots, however, that tipped the scale in Helen Heiland's favor, so that she could remain in office to this day, where she has been instrumental in supporting the ambulance service that East Moline residents do not want (a vote of 87% against on Feb. 2nd) and has provided little leadership to the ailing downtown district or the 1^st Ward she supposedly represents.

Community activists went door-to-door to collect enough signatures to put the ambulance service to a public vote. Even after that, Helen Heiland and her supporters tried to sneak it past the voters two times during East Moline City Council meetings, (before it went to the voters who soundly rejected it).

In the February 2^nd Democratic primary, the issue of East Moline's starting its own ambulance service was defeated, with 87% of local East Moline residents (2,712 to 384 according to Dustin Lemmon's February 3, 2012 Quad City Times online website) voting a resounding "No!" Nevertheless, subsequent minutes of the East Moline City Council meeting(s) noted that the ambulance vote of February 2^nd, was "non-binding" and 1^st Ward alderman Helen Heiland, with her usual visionary prounouncements, said she might not vote at all if the issue were to again come before the City Council again.

East Moline (IL) Left Out of the Loop While the City Dies

The East Moline City Council recently failed to get the downtown area of East Moline placed on "the Loop." The Loop is a new diesel bus service, a fleet of 4 orange buses purchased with an $838,000 grant, which will transport tourists around the loop of the Quad Cities...but not to East Moline. It's now accurate to say, of East Moline, "We're out of the loop." Business owners of East Moline's dying and decrepit downtown area are understandably upset.

1^st Ward Aldreman Heiland and Mayor John Thodos ran as a team in 2005 and spent massive amounts of money with a firm in Iowa (Camp Victory) that campaigned for George W. Bush, all in the service of a very dirty campaign against popular incumbent Mayor Joe Moreno. Since that time, Ms. Heiland has complained in print letters to the editor (in 2008) about not being selected to succeed John Gianulis as Rock Island County Democratic Chairman, despite the fact that John Gianulis retired due to old age in 2008 after 40 years running the show. Mr. Gianulis died on February 8 at the age of 87. Mrs. Heiland is his contemporary and was his protégé. (And, she thought, his heir apparent.)

Newspaper articles of January 14, 2010, in the Davenport (IA) Quad City Times and the Moline (IL) Dispatch described the Leibovitz software as being able to "target" certain voters. One thing is certain: the voters that were being targeted during my one-time-only run against long-time incumbent Helen Heiland (supported in office all her years by her mentor and County Democratic Chairman John Gianulis) were mostly "the lame, the halt and the blind."

If the voter was near death, a member of the incumbent's camp raced out to get the nearly dead individual to sign an absentee ballot. Some of those to whom I personally spoke (who were undergoing chemotherapy at the time and were not totally "with it.") had little or no idea what it was that they had ostensibly signed. It was really sad to see the physical shape that these people were in: one had just had his foot amputated and was in the hospital. One woman "voter" was undergoing chemotherapy, was completely bald, and seemed mentally incompetent.

I secured signed notarized statements that more people than I had been given credit for had voted for me, only to be told by the presiding Judge that now each of these voters must appear in court, in person, by 9 a.m. the very next day! No ability to subpoena them, no time allotted for properly transporting the extremely infirm individuals (who voted absentee for that very reason.) And that's assuming they had not died in the interim! It was all very "hurry up" and defied logic at every turn (especially the "law of proportionate reduction" in Illinois.)

Passing Offices On in Illinois, AKA "Jacob-izing" them.

Rock Island County Board Chairman Jim Bohnsack has been subpoenaed to appear in Peoria on February 27th before a Federal Grand Jury to testify in the ongoing investigation of former County Clerk Leibovitz. FBI investigators have been interviewing various office workers within the 7-member County Clerk's office. Rumor has it that the County Clerk dismissed one disgruntled employee in January of this year in order to make room for Leibovitz's son, Nick.

Increasingly, passing one's office on to one's child by hook or by crook is the way that public offices in Illinois change hands, most notably with the deal cut by former Illinois State Senator Denny Jacobs (Illinois State Senator, Dem, East Moline) so that he could retire mid-term and hand his office over to his son, Mike, who had served as Dad Denny's aide while his father served in the Illinois Senate.

Mike Jacobs' picture, in fact, appeared in February 12^,s 2010's editorial page of the Chicago Tribune. The younger Jacobs has proposed the opposite of a "pay to play" scheme for counties in Illinois that do not go along with the plan to implement casino gambling machines in counties state-wide as a revenue source. Jacobs has proposed a bill to penalize any county that does not allow casino gambling machines (slots, etc.), using a formula that would charge the county that does not choose to participate by figuring out the maximum amount of revenue that the maximum casino gambling machine placement would have yielded, had the county not opted out. The Tribune was openly critical of the bill to the point of derision.

CONCLUSION

What is particularly shameful about the treatment I received at the hands of County Clerk Richard "Dick" Leibovitz, is that I taught at least one of his sons English at Silvis Junior High School while serving as English Department Chairperson from 1969 to 1985. I gave honest service and treated Mr. Leibovitz's sons and nephews fairly. I wish I could say the same of his arrogant and shameful treatment of me when I ran for office to try to help turn around the flagging fortunes of the city of East Moline, Illinois.

It has taken five full years for the newspapers, handed the blockbuster story on a silver platter by the research of the Toppert family, to uncover the corruption in the Rock Island, Illinois, County Clerk's office, despite a conversation I had with Mark Ridolfi of the Quad City Times nearly that long ago in which he told me that a letter I had written to their Letters to the Editor column (which never ran) had gone a long way to help them understand the corruption they suspected existed in the Rock Island County Clerk's office.

If you suspected it existed five years ago, guys, why didn't YOU assign some investigative reporters to ferret out the information that the Toppert family discovered? Regardless of the vested interest Larry Toppert might have had in discrediting his opponent (and how poorly that tactic often goes over with voters), when someone is chopping away at the Tree of Liberty and Fair Elections while lining their pockets with taxpayers' money, and you have suspected it "for a long time," maybe it is time for the local media to do a little more reporting of what's right there in front of them, for all the world to see, if only they'll look and report.

Reporters should be routinely assigned to recounts, actually show up for them and, when there's a discrepancy noted, write about it. The "power of the press" has, indeed, faded, but if the press doesn't even report the story until dishonest behavior has been going on for 24 years, or doesn't follow up on "suspicions" until five years after hearing an investigative reporter (i.e., me, going door-to-door uncovering fraud at many of those doors) tell them exactly what's going on, can that same world of print, today's newspaper really complain about its downfall?