Jodie and Ken Zitko, co-chairs of the Illinois chapter of Unite4Freedom, will speak at the Feb. 21 “Defending Your Vote Summit” in Orland Park aimed at teaching participants how to hand-count ballots and monitor elections for compliance with federal law.
The event runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with tickets priced at $60 per person or $35 without meals.
Other featured speakers include Professor David Clements, Joe Oltmann, host of Conservative Daily and candidate for governor of Colorado, Mark Cook of the Hand Count Roadshow, a systems analyst with expertise on Dominion, ES&S, and Hart InterCivic voting systems, and Loy Brunson, a former U.S. Senate candidate from Utah.
The Zitkos, based in Saint Charles, said they first became involved in inspecting voter rolls after discovering errors in their own Kane County voting records while volunteering for a U.S. Senate campaign.
“We were shocked,” Jodie told the Kane County Reporter. “We never voted in a midterm election until 2022, but our records both showed us voting in 2010, 2014 and 2018 midterm elections.”
The findings led to a meeting with Kane County Clerk John Cunningham. The Zitkos said Cunningham expressed interest, called someone from outside his office to collect their information, and instructed them to check the voting records to determine whether the issue existed at the county or state level.
“They went and pulled the data from the county and sure enough those votes are there as well,” Ken told the Kane County Reporter.
The Zitkos said their findings in Kane County were never resolved. They described Unite4Freedom’s approach to election oversight and data analysis as nonpartisan and focused on compliance with federal law.
“Unite4Freedom was founded in 2023. We’re an organization that is focused on what we call election validity versus integrity,” Jodie said.
Jodie described the group’s method for analyzing voter registration accuracy.
“We are focused on data-driven analysis to essentially share what is going on, at least with the voter rolls, in terms of are they valid? Are they accurate? What are they reflecting? We do it all through a direct chain of custody, including through FOIAs,” she said.
Unite4Freedom is a volunteer-based, nonpartisan civic organization that has analyzed federal elections in 35 states and says it is the first organization to assess election misconduct by comparing data analytics to criminal law standards.
The organization advocates for election validity through forensic investigations, advocacy, litigation, education, and public outreach, while encouraging public participation through donations and volunteer work.
“We’re fundamentally a rule-of-law group, and our work begins and ends by, you know, trying to enforce election laws that Congress actually passed,” Jodie said. “We’re not rewriting them, we are not expanding on them, we’re not even selectively ignoring them. We’re assessing the election systems, these voter registrations, and the practices that come along with them against those three laws—and then the U.S. Constitution.”
Defending Your Vote Summit Feb 21 in Orland Park teaches attendees to audit, hand-count, and protect elections, with demos, vendors, and training on securing voter integrity. (Illinois Freedom Alliance)
She emphasized that verification is central to the approach.
“Can compliance be independently verified? Sure,” Jodie said. “It’s that simple. Anything beyond that, at this point, if we have fair and free elections, whatever the outcome… You would ask our volunteers, they would all say that’s all we’re seeking: just free and fair elections at the end of the day.”
Jodie said the team documented irregularities in multiple election cycles.
“We did actually bring 55 affidavits to our Kane County State’s Attorney documenting incidents like poll workers having phones knocked out of their hands during voting,” she said. “We also documented server outages that affected vote tallies on election night, which prompted a special investigation.”
She described the expertise of the volunteer team driving the organization’s data analysis.
“We have 95 volunteer data professionals who are working on the data across the United States,” Jodie said. “For 2024, we had 35 scorecards in 35 states. The data team consists of people who have worked in the public, private and government sectors. They collectively represent hundreds of years of experience in system engineering, cybersecurity, fraud detection, financial risk analysis, cloud computing, auditing and compliance.”
Jodie said she and Ken were invited to lead the Illinois chapter after the group’s founding.
“A year later, once Harry Haury founded Unite4Freedom, they came back and asked us if we wanted to be state chapter directors here in Illinois,” she said. “And so now we’re on the executive board of the organization. And Ken actually helps lead the data team along with Harry Haury.”
According to his bio, Haury, chairman and COO of Unite4Freedom, has more than 25 years of experience in engineering, cybersecurity and secure systems design.
Jodie described the scope of the data team Ken and Haury coordinate, noting that their work evaluates voter data and election procedures for compliance with federal election laws, including the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Accessible Voting Act of 2002 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
“Essentially, in a nutshell, we peer review all of our scorecards across 35 states,” Jodie said. “Our primary focus is evaluating the data forensics against existing statutory requirements… And then essentially aligning that with good government principles, fiscal responsibility and constitutional governance. So these are the things we’re focused on and in trying to be transparent with the findings that we have.”
Ken explained how the team’s findings highlight potential legal and compliance issues with voter registrations.
“What’s the incentive of being out of compliance? Well, again, that document that the DOJ published related to prosecuting election offenses basically says in plain English that leaving registrations on the voter roll that don’t belong there just opens the door for fraudulent activity,” Ken said. “So they’re not making conclusions, such as explaining that it’s sort of the gateway to an opportunity.”
Ken said the team submitted complaints to state election authorities aimed at verifying eligibility and the lawful certification of elections. He noted that the Illinois 2024 scorecard compiled by Unite4Freedom lists roughly 4.5 million issues, which he said cover a range of administrative and procedural concerns and do not necessarily indicate criminal wrongdoing.
Referencing the Civil Rights Act of 1960, Ken said election authorities have an affirmative duty to enforce the law.
“The way the law works with respect to elections, the election authority has an affirmative duty to enforce the law,” Ken said. “So whether it’s malice or ignorance or arrogance, that doesn’t really matter. The fact that they fail to adhere to the law.”
He highlighted how incomplete registrations can signal potential issues.
“Intent is difficult to pin down, but when you have tens of thousands of registrations with no birth date or hundreds of thousands of registrations that are dated January 1st — a federal holiday — that’s an indication of either injected registrations or sloppy bookkeeping,” Ken said. “The National Voter Registration Act says that voter rolls have to be accurate…Throwing in placeholder data, that’s not accurate.”
Ken also described how the team verified voter participation through The Phantom Voter Report.
“There’s a lot to the report, but basically we take a statistically relevant sample set from the participating voters in the geographical region,” he said. “Then we use a series of verification steps — identity checks, addresses, Social Security numbers — to make sure these people exist and actually participated.”
Ken shared results from multi-state analyses.
“We ran this report in Texas and Illinois,” he said. “In Illinois, 14.9% of participating voters in four counties proved unverifiable. So the conclusion is that those were fake voters. In Texas, 14.2% of the participating voters in those two counties were proven to be, or the conclusion was, they’re fake voters. Practically the same percentage in a very red state, very blue state.”
He said these findings suggest election irregularities occur regardless of political party.
“So this kind of shines a light on the fact that all that really doesn’t matter,” Ken said. “And fraud isn’t a partisan activity, everybody is involved.”
