UPDATED: Oak Lawn Activist Indicted for Filing Fraudulent Election Petition

Updated 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19:

, has been indicted for filing fraudulent petitions in an attempt to get a referendum placed on the ballot in Oak Lawn.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced the indictments on Wednesday.

Jurcev has been charged with one felony count of mutilation of election materials, and the misdemeanor offense of disregard of election code. A press release from the state’s attorney’s office said that Jurcev appeared in court Wednesday morning at the Cook County Criminal Courts Building in Chicago where the indictment was announced.

The Oak Lawn woman appeared before Judge Clayton Crane. Jurcev pled not guilty and was released on her own recognizance. If convicted, Jurcev faces up to three years in prison.

Oak Lawn Tax Watch billed itself as a watchdog group that tracked how taxpayer dollars were spent by Oak Lawn elected officials.

Jurcev led an effort to collect signatures for nominating petitions to place a referendum on the ballot that would have asked voters to change the structure of Oak Lawn’s municipal government.

Prosecutors alleged during Jurcev's dual arraignment and bond hearing on Wednesday that between December 2010 and January 2011, Jurcev led circulators in collecting 1,200 signatures from registered voters in Oak Lawn.

Cook County State's Attorney investigators discovered that 85 of the 132 petition sheets allegedly circulated by Jurcev's 96-year-old mother last December during "cold and snowy weather" were personally notarized by Jurcev, the state's attorney's office said.

According to the criminal complaint, when prosecutors first confronted Jurcev about the fraudulant signatures, she told them that her elderly mother circulated the petitions. Jurcev later changed her story, admitting that she forged voters' signatures as well as her mother's name on the petition.

Jurcev said she would not be making any comments when reached by phone. Her next court appearance is Nov. 29.