A publishing company sued by Democratic Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul for improperly publicizing dates of birth and home addresses for hundreds of thousands of voters has settled the case without admitting criminal wrongdoing.
Local Government Information Services, Inc., a Lake Forest-based operator of dozens of right-leaning online news outlets that have peddled election conspiracy theories, entered into the previously unreported settlement agreement with Raoul’s office in late January.
The agreement in Lake County Circuit Court requires the company to destroy any restricted voter data it had that included birth dates and home addresses and to refrain from publishing any such data if it originated from voter roll information that came from the Illinois State Board of Elections.
No fines were levied as a result of the agreement, which required the company to cover its own legal expenses, and LGIS did not admit any liability or unlawful conduct as a result of its actions.
When Raoul’s office sued LGIS last May, it sought a declaration from the state court that the company had violated state election law by illegally obtaining and publishing voters’ dates of birth and street numbers.
The company’s publication of that information in its online publications posed “a grave threat to certain classes of individuals, such as domestic violence victims, judges, and law enforcement officers, whose safety will be endangered by having their private information published on the internet,” the state lawsuit alleged.
A Lake County judge ordered the restricted voter data be removed from LGIS’ websites shortly after the lawsuit was filed, and the company complied.
Raoul’s office did not explain how the settlement it entered into with LGIS assuaged its initial concerns that LGIS broke state election law and endangered law enforcement officials and domestic violence victims.
Instead, it issued only a brief statement.
“We are pleased that the case is resolved,” Raoul spokeswoman Jamey Dunn-Thomason said.
The attorney general’s office did not indicate whether it had received any complaints from voters concerning identity theft or any potential threats arising from LGIS’ publication of restricted voter roll information.
The Kansas City, Mo.-based lawyer representing LGIS, Edward D. Greim, did not respond to inquiries from WBEZ about the settlement. The agreement was signed by company president Brian Timpone.
LGIS dissolved on Jan. 10, 2025, according to the Illinois secretary of state’s office.
The State Board of Elections, which Raoul’s office was representing in the case, declined through a spokesman to comment about the resolution of the lawsuit.
WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times previously reported that LGIS had exposed dates of birth and home addresses online for more than 6 million Illinois voters last year, including dozens of state and federal judges whose places of residence are legally protected.
An analysis of more than 30 of LGIS’ websites also identified home addresses for those involved in a high-profile federal narcotics case involving a foreign drug cartel, prosecutors involved in public corruption cases, prominent Illinois-based actors and musicians, Chicago sports luminaries and several billionaires.
When that analysis was published, tens of thousands of unredacted records from that trove of 6.2 million voter records remained publicly accessible afterward through services that snapshot and archive pages from the internet, including at least one federal judge and a member of the billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs.
The Illinois Judicial Privacy Act, enacted in 2012 and inspired by the murders of federal Judge Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother, bars publication of judges’ home addresses if a judge requests the information be removed. Anyone who posts such information knowing it potentially poses a threat to a judge and harm actually ensues could be charged with a felony.
Last fall, Timpone told WBEZ the burden of safeguarding judicial addresses rests with the Illinois State Board of Elections.
“Worth noting that we have been publishing public records all around the country for 20 years, and that it isn’t unusual for states/counties to be derelict in their statutory obligations like this one,” Timpone wrote in an email at the time. “Legislatures pass laws like these, but the custodians of state public records don’t obfuscate the names.”
Without offering detail, Timpone wrote that his company has “processes by which anyone in law enforcement can alert us to this so we can remove their names. This happens frequently.”
Raoul’s lawsuit listed GOP political operative and radio talk-show host Dan Proft as an owner of LGIS when it was founded in 2016.
Proft led the state political action committee, Liberty Principles PAC, to which the State Board of Elections provided voter roll information in 2016, the lawsuit alleged.
The attorney general’s office, in its lawsuit, alleged Proft’s PAC provided that information to LGIS for publication. The company merged that information with 2020 voter roll information it obtained from an unidentified political committee, the lawsuit alleged.
Dave McKinney covers Illinois politics and government for WBEZ and is the former long-time Springfield bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times.