Early voting in all 50 Chicago wards begins on Monday, October 24... Trump's attacks on Chicago and Chicago voting and the historical record... Chicago's history of voting the dead was matched by Republicans voting downstate cows when no one was watching...
By the late 1960s, Chicago's mayor Richard J. Daley had perfected the voting power of the "Machine." Contrary to some versions of history, Daley's power based during his nearly three decades in office was in the city's black wards, controlled for most of those years by Congressman William Dawson. The rebellion that resulted the election of Harold Washington in 1983 was basically a demographic realignment within the Democratic Party of Cook County (despite some current mythology about there being a "Harold Washington Movement", Washington ran and won as a Democrat and built his future governing coalition within the same Democratic Party perfected by Richard J. Daley. Although early voting for Chicagoans began two weeks ago at the downtown offices of the Election Board, early voting at community locations in all 50 Chicago wards does not begin until Monday, October 24, 2016. (This reporter has been early voting in the 45th Ward for several years).
Contrary to claims made during the final presidential debate, there has been no proven voting fraud in Chicago in several recent elections.
Substance has already reported earlier that the largest voter suppression campaign in Chicago history was organized by candidate Richard M. Nixon's 1968 campaign with the help of at least one of Chicago's notorious street gangs, the Black P. Stone Nation. During the run up to the November 1968 voting, Jeff Fort and his gang went around proclaiming that all the candidates were the same and that black people were wasting their vote supporting the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey.
Part of that is even reported in Wikipedia, the Jeff Fort entry:
"Around 1959, Jeff Fort and Hairston formed the Blackstone Rangers gang at St. Charles [the juvenile correctional center]. The Blackstone Rangers originated as a small youth gang along Blackstone Avenue in the Woodlawn area, assembled to defend themselves against other gangs in the South Side. Hairston was the gang's leader with Fort as second in command. The Rangers fought rival gangs, especially the Devil's Disciples.
Jeff Fort (center) and friends in an undated photograph from the 1960s. "During the early 1960s, Fort earned the nickname 'Angel' for his ability to solve disputes and form alliances between the Rangers and other gangs. By the mid 1960s, Fort assembled a coalition of 21 gangs with about 5,000 members. He organized the coalition under a governing body called the 'Main 21', composed of 21 gang leaders or 'generals.' As the Ranger organization grew, it became involved in community and political activism. The gang also received support from Presbyterian minister Reverend John Fry who advised Hairston and Fort how to manage their organization. [Fry even wrote a book, 'Fire and Blackstone,' which praised the Blackstone Rangers. His work was later discredited when law enforcement revealed that Fort and his organization had used the church for gang organizing and disciple].
"Under Rev. Fry's guidance, Fort obtained a charter from the State of Illinois to form a political organization, Grassroots Independent Voters of Illinois, in 1967. Fort's organization applied for and received a $1 million federal grant from the now-defunct Office of Economic Opportunity to fund a program to teach job skills to gang members.
"The Rangers also received grants and loans from private foundations. Unlike many gangs, the Blackstone Rangers were not considered outsiders but had been largely accepted by Chicago society, with Jeff Fort even receiving an invitation from President Richard Nixon, following the 1968 election to attend the 1969 inaugural ball. (Fort declined this invitation, sending his "top man" Mickey Cogwell and one of his "generals" in his stead to the 1969 inauguration).
"After Hairston was imprisoned in 1966, Fort assumed command of the Rangers. By 1968 he renamed it to the Almighty Black P. Stone Nation or Black P. Stones. The Stones engaged in robberies, extortion, and forced recruitment while also acting to keep order in the South Side. The Stones also gained control of vice in the South Side, demanding protection payments from prostitution operations and drug dealers.
"In 1969 the jobs program came under investigation amid accusations that grant money was diverted to criminal activities. Fort was subpoenaed to testify before a Senate committee. Fort introduced himself at the committee hearings and walked out; for this, he was convicted of contempt of Congress. In 1972, Fort and two others were convicted of misusing federal funds and Fort was sentenced to five years in prison. Fort served two years at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth and was paroled in 1976. During his time at Leavenworth, Fort converted to Islam and assumed the name Prince Malik."
Left out of many of the accounts of Fort's work in 1968 was the reason for the Nixon invitation in January 1969 -- Fort's work on behalf of the candidacy of Nixon, who won the presidency against Hubert Humphrey by a slim margin. Part of the popular vote for Nixon came as a result of the intimidation in Chicago's African American community -- "Don't vote. They're all the same" (meaning all white politicians are the same). The federal grants to Fort's job training program were part of the reward for his anti-Humphrey work. Later, it became a bait and switch. When the gang was unable to manage the money and account for it, the feds charged Fort with federal crimes and threw him in jail.
While Donald Trump has been repeating historical charges against Democratic machine voting policies, he is ignoring the fact that there has been an equal problem with Republican machine voting. The greatest voter suppression campaigns in history were, of course, the Ku Klux Klan terrorist campaigns against black voters in the South during the era of Jim Crow and Lynch Law. Trump ignores the support he is receiving from the KKK and other vicious reactionaries, racists, and fascists. But equally, there is a bit of humor in claims that Democrats voted corpses when they could. Where I came from in New Jersey, it was widely known that the Hudson County precincts that included the massive cemetaries one passes on the way into New York City were strongly Democratic. But Democratic precinct workers (including my grandfather, who worked in the Hague organization) answered charges that Democratic corpses were supporting the New Deal with the answer that in Southern New Jersey half the cows were voting Republican! The same has been said of the contrast between urban and rural areas of Illinois.
Trump's flimsy grasp of history notwithstanding, there is a lot of interest today in reviewing the exotic histories of voting in the USA. And the odds are, by contrast with previous decades and centuries, the 2016 elections will be among the cleanest in American history.
And so, flashing forward to 2016, there is early voting across Chicago, and the history of vote "issues" in Chicago is more of a historical interest than a current event. Two recent stories are worth reading despite Trump's outrageous (and unsubstantiated) claims against Chicago.
DNA INFO REPORTED ON THE NORTHWEST SIDE EARLY VOTING LOCATIONS...
Early Voting Starts Monday On Far Northwest Side
By Alex Nitkin | October 20, 2016 5:42am
CHICAGO — Starting on Monday [October 24, 2016], residents of the Far Northwest Side won't have to trek downtown to cast early ballots.
A polling station will open in each of the city's 50 wards on Oct. 24, and registration services will be available at all of them, officials said. Residents can register on any day before — and including — Election Day.
Related: What Chicagoans Will Be Voting For This November
Voters can show up any time from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, at these locations in the 38th, 39th, 41st and 45th wards:
• Hiawatha Park, 8029 W. Forest Preserve Ave.
• North Park Village Administration Building, 5801 N. Pulaski Road
• Roden Library, 6083 N. Northwest Hwy.
• Chicago Police Department Jefferson Park Police District Headquarters, 5151 N. Milwaukee Ave.
The polling places will also be open on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., officials said. Starting Oct. 31, they'll stay open until 7 p.m. on weekdays.
For anyone who doesn't want to wait until Monday, early voting has been underway at a polling "super site" in the Loop for weeks.
Related: Chicago And Rigged Elections? The History Is Even Crazier Than You've Heard
Voters shouldn't feel the need to report to their own ward's polling place: Chicago residents can cast their ballots at any official polling place inside the city.
Government-issued photo ID is "not required but is helpful if there is a question about the voter's registration, address, signature or if there are two voters with the same or similar names at the same address," according to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
DNA INFO ON THE HISTORY OF CHICAGO'S CREATIVE APPROACH TO VOTING...
Chicago And Rigged Elections? The History Is Even Crazier Than You've Heard
By Kelly Bauer, October 19, 2016 3:43pm, Updated on October 19, 2016 3:46pm
President John F. Kennedy posed with Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago and the Daley family in the Oval Office on Jan. 21, 1961.
CHICAGO — You can still vote early in Chicago, but "voting often" is pretty much a thing of the past, some experts say.
Chicago is famous for its history of people voting from the grave and for helping President John F. Kennedy "steal" the 1960 election. (JFK beat Richard Nixon by 9,000 votes in Illinois by capturing what some considered a suspiciously high 450,000 advantage in Cook County.)
Officials insist voter fraud has largely disappeared in Chicago, but Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, has said voter fraud and "horrendous" things happen in Chicago.
The city's election history is even crazier than most people realize, though, with Republican feuds leading to homes being bombed and names being stolen from tombstones just to get extra votes for the "Democratic Machine."
The city's old "reputation is true, or at least partially true," said Dick Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
During the 1928 primary election, shootings and bombings were used to frighten and eliminate opponents. That election — which saw two political figures killed and 62 bombings, including one at the home of a senator and Cook County State's Attorney candidate — became known as the "Pineapple Primary," using the slang term "pineapple" for a grenade.
Back then, people thought the Republicans, and particularly Mayor William Thompson, ran "the greatest political machine ever fashioned in Cook County," according to April 12, 1928, Chicago Tribune story.
They hadn't seen anything yet.
It was Mayor Anton Cermak, the first in an unbroken stream of Democratic mayors since 1931, who created what would became known as the infamous "Democratic Machine," said Bob Crawford, a now-retired journalist who covered city politics for decades for WBBM-AM and was considered the dean of the City Hall press corps. The Machine ensured voters picked the right candidates, and the people who worked in it weren't shy about using money, bribes or fake identities to get votes for Democrats.
Through decades of organization, the Machine would become a "monolithic political organization that crisscrossed racial and ethnic boundaries in the city," Crawford said. The Machine's operators took advantage of cynicism among voters, who figured they at least had clean water and other necessities thanks to the Machine-backed candidates, leading to systemic fraud, Crawford said.
And the people involved in the Machine didn't just cheat to win — they cheated so they could get major victories that could give their candidates a "mandate" and discourage potential opponents from rival parties from running for office.
The Machine operated for decades, but it was Mayor Richard J. Daley (who held office from 1955 to 1976) who mastered it, Crawford said.
"It was Cermak who got the credit for actually creating what came to be known as the Democratic Machine," Crawford said. "Daley got the credit for turning it into an art form."
In fact, Robert F. Kennedy once said Daley was "the whole ballgame" — meaning if candidates had Daley and his Machine on their side, they could carry all of Illinois, Crawford said.
Notably, the Daley-era Machine has been said to have "stolen" the presidential election for JFK, Robert's older brother, through voter fraud. (Republicans in suburban Lake and DuPage counties tried to steal the vote, too, Crawford and Simpson said, and they think Kennedy probably would have won Illinois anyway.)
Here are a few of the tricks the Machine used:
• Electoral rolls are supposed to keep track of who is registered to vote. The rolls would be rigged so dead people's names still appeared on them, Crawford said, meaning others could vote for the candidate of their choice in the dead person's name.
Sometimes, people working for the Machine would even go into cemeteries and take the names off of tombstones, then go back and fill out voter registration cards with the dead person's names as if they were still alive, Crawford said.
• Election judges are supposed to keep an eye out for anything fishy at the polls. Republicans had a small presence in the city, though, and it was difficult to find Republican volunteers for the post, Crawford said.
Democrats would pretend to be Republicans and would volunteer, meaning there were actually two Democrats at polling places. Officers who provided security got their jobs from the Machine and weren't going to say anything about what happened, Crawford said.
• People would be promised $5, a warm meal or a drink at the local pub to vote for the "right" people, said Crawford and Simpson.
Sometimes, the precinct captain would steal a ballot, mark it and give it to someone to turn in, Simpson said. That person would then bring the blank ballot they'd been given at the polling place back to the captain, who'd fill it out for the next person to come in, and so on.
An old sewer boss, Ed Quigley, once told Crawford he had a special way to make sure people voted the right way: When a voter would go behind a curtain to cast his or her ballot, they had to move to to one side to vote for a Democrat or the other side to vote for a Republican. Quigley would look under the curtain at the voter's feet to make sure they were on the Democratic side, Crawford said.
• No Republicans to watch for suspicious activity in the precinct? The Democratic precinct captain would just vote for people who didn't come in, Simpson said.
• Ward committeemen would go to nursing homes and "help" senior people with marking absentee ballots by holding the voter's hand, Crawford said. Nursing homes would cooperate because they needed a good relationship with the city, which inspects them, he said.
After Daley's death in office in 1976, the Machine gradually began to lose power, Crawford said.
In 1983, Mayor Harold Washington created the city's first Freedom of Information law, allowing journalists and others to obtain and analyze records. Independent reformers also filed complaints in federal courts and judges ruled they should be able to observe precincts on election days, Crawford said.
The "new set of eyes" from those two changes made a "huge difference" because officials couldn't hide as much, Crawford said. A Tribune expose into fraudulent registrations, which won a Pulitzer Prize, also forced reform in the city.
A lot has changed since those days, said James Allen, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners spokesman. The Illinois Voter Registration System examines the state's voter rolls to look for people registered more than once, and it checks records to remove people who have died.
An electronic roll book keeps people from voting twice, Allen said, and there's a paper trail for every ballot that's cast. Poll watchers still keep an eye on voting places.
In the last 10 years, there have been 9 million ballots cast, Allen said, and only 10 of them were referred to the State's Attorney's Office for suspicious activity. None of that resulted in the change of any election outcome, he said.
It's "not exactly the same system our parents and our grandparents had when they had giant paper poll books and lever machines," Allen said. "It's a little different now than the early '80s or '70s or the '60s, and thank goodness for that."
And as for the claim that Chicagoans "vote early and vote often" — at least the first part is true, Allen said.
"Early voting is open now ...," Allen said. "But often? No."
