Chicago Rules Of Election Fraud

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The Frumious Bandersnatch has obtained the following memorandum from the Chicago political machine:

How to steal an election

Vote early and vote often

Our election get-out-the-vote effort was pioneered by Mayor Richard Daley in 1960 when he stole the election from Richard Nixon.

1. Cemetery Voters: Read the obituaries every day. One must keep track of everyone who dies, so that they can be registered in the appropriate cemetery precinct. We have voters in the Mt. Olive Cemetery who have been voting for 100 years. Relatives will often assist as keeping the dead voter on the rolls also keeps the Social Security checks coming in. If you know of someone who used to live in Chicago and who died, they are still eligible to vote.

2. Homeless Voters: Register the homeless at the Cook County Courthouse instead of General Delivery. All they have to do is hang out at the courthouse one day a year to claim residency. Then round them up and give them free cigarettes to vote. We used to give them bottles of wine, but they couldn't remember to vote our way.

3. Nursing Home Voters: Early (or absentee) voting has greatly expanded our capabilities of increasing the turnout. Take bags full of early ballots to nursing homes, and get everyone in the home to vote...especially the Alzheimer's cases.

4. College Students: College kids like to screw the system, and they'll vote more than once just for the sheer pleasure of it, especially kids at Catholic universities.

5. Voters Who Have Moved: Voters who have moved often can vote in the precinct where they used to live, and then in their new precinct. They will not be on the rolls in the new precinct, so they'll vote a "Provisional Ballot." Not to worry. When the ballot is questioned after the election, we will have our political hacks permit the votes to be counted.

6. Voters Passing Through O'Hare: Many votes can be obtained by soliciting voter registration at our airports. They are legally residents of Chicago, at least for a few minutes.

7. Motor Voters: Take license plate numbers of out-of-state cars passing through on the freeways, run them through DMV to get their addresses, and automatically register them in Chicago. Then vote them. They won't know, since they actually live in Wyoming.

8. Illegal Aliens: Some of our most reliable voters are the thousands of illegal aliens we have in the city. In exchange for not telling INS where they live or work, one can get a solid block of votes.

9. Newborns: Our children are more and more precocious, so we register them at birth. Maternity wards are some of our best precincts.

10. Recount The Votes: In the unlikely event our candidates don't win the first count, then demand a recount. Fill the recount room with loyal supporters, and tow away the cars belonging to the enemy. If you can't win a recount, then you are not a Chicago Democrat.

Variants for the new millennium

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As computer voting machines become more common with the new millennium there are naturally new ways being invented to manipulate elections.

• Don't give them machines: In the 2004 presidential race in the critical state of Ohio voters were required to vote on machines. However, very few voting machines were deployed in heavily Democratic black precincts. Thus, these voters had a choice of waiting in line for up to 8 hours, often in the rain, or not voting. Of course precincts in affluent neighborhoods had an overabundance of voting machines. The use of paper ballots would have obviated this problem but where is the profit in that?

• Default votes: Computer voting machines can be programmed in a manner such that if a voter doesn't choose a candidate or a position on an issue, i.e., undervotes, the computer gives their vote to a "default" candidate or issue of the programmer's choice. Since even in presidential races the undervote runs around 2%, such "default" votes can be enough to swing the race for a few bucks on the side to the programmer.

• Phantom voters: With Motor Voter and mail in registration forms it has become increasingly popular to submit as many voter registration forms as possible. Since there is no real need for these "voters" to actually exist except in the computer, anyone can vote as many of their alter egos as they would like.

• Forget the ballot box, stuff the central computer: It used to be that one had to go to considerable effort to get ballots, fill them out, and get them in the ballot box. But life with computers is much simpler. Go to the central computer and change the vote totals for a candidate to anything you want for the whole county in a couple of minutes.

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Last updated 6/14/09