A Lake County Judge gave a right-wing website editor until Monday at 5pm to remove voters’ personal information from their websites. As of Tuesday afternoon, most met the standards of the agreed order.
Included in its 20 sites across the state, Local Government Information Services, Inc., published a series of stories detailing voters’ names, date of birth, home address, and whether or not they voted in the 2020 presidential election.
The articles are still online, but with several changes, now showing the year of birth instead of the date of birth and the street name instead of the home address.
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Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, at the request of the state election authority, filed a complaint against the network of websites for publishing confidential information about Illinois voters. His office and Local Government Information Services, Inc. agreed to the request made on May 9.
A spokesperson for the AG’s office said in an email that opposing counsel told them his client made the changes to comply with the order and is currently reviewing the matter.
Requests for comment from site operator Brian Timpone, a former state reporter and Republican speaker of the Illinois House, were not returned. The site also has ties to Dan Proft, a conservative radio host and former Republican candidate for governor of Illinois.
Proft had access to 2016 voter files from his time as president of the now-defunct Freedom Principles PAC. The belief is that the outlet combined the old data with 2020 voter data, but it remains unclear how they obtained voter data from the most recent presidential election.
A previous analysis by The State Journal-Register found that at least 29,000 Springfield residents had their personal voter information published this year by The Sangamon Sun, an LGIS property.
The media group has a presence online and in print publications throughout Illinois, including The Rockford Sun, Peoria Standard, Galesburg Reporter and NW Illinois News.
The court set June 7 as the next scheduled hearing.
Contact Patrick M. Keck: 312-549-9340, pkeck@gannett.com, twitter.com/@pkeckreporter.
This article originally appeared in the State Journal-Register: Right-wing editor removes some personal information from Illinois voters
