By John F. Di Leo -
Join us, as we follow our intrepid campaign volunteer’s latest lesson in the world of vote fraud…
Pavel Syerov was back from college, in town for spring break, and he was looking forward to voting.
Every college schedules its breaks at different times. He, his brother and sister were all on different schedules… but then, they were voting at their university addresses this year, while Pavel had remained registered from home.
Raised in the city, in the infamous 51st Ward, his parents had finally moved to the suburbs, where they had been voting these past few years.
Even though Pavel’s studies kept him too busy at college for political involvement this semester, he always looked forward to voting.
Young enough to still feel the patriotic excitement of American liberty, the coming of Election Day always crystallized so many things in his mind: his appreciation for his grandparents getting out of Stalin’s Soviet Union and coming to America… his immense gratitude for his parents, who worked so hard, raising him with an understanding of civics that made up for the lack of it in public schools today… and of course, all the memories of that shocking and educational summer when he volunteered for the 51st ward party organization headquarters, because he couldn’t find a regular part-time job.
Pavel‘s parents were Republicans, though they hadn’t always been. Both had once been shop stewards at a Chicago factory, until the union’s endless demands combined with the tax and regulatory burdens of city, county, state and nation to drive the factory out of business when he was a kid.
Mr. and Mrs. Syerov learned the hard way, and converted to the GOP the day the plant closed… of course, being Chicagoans, they couldn’t make it public. They kept taking Democrat ballots for a couple more cycles, only able to vote their consciences in November’s general elections.
But they raised their children to think – critically and sensibly – applying their studies of Plato’s lessons in logic, and trying to view every political question in the context of both American and world history. The Syerov kids would grow up to be diligent and principled voters, maybe not always making the right choice – sometimes there is no right choice, especially in Illinois – but at least always going about it the right way.
As Pavel strolled to the polling place this fine morning, he chuckled to think of how baffled he was when his parents told him to volunteer for the Party that summer, to get an education available nowhere else on earth.
From collating literature in the front room to keeping the Deputy Committeeman supplied with beer and pretzels… From listening in on unguarded conversations between Pockets and The Boss, to accompanying them on errands that would make a special counsel blush.
That summer, and on the occasional times later when he volunteered again, Pavel learned that the suspicions of voter fraud in the public American dialogue barely scratch the surface of what’s really out there.
It isn’t that a single precinct captain dumps a bag full of forged ballots in a ballot box, when no one is looking… that may happen occasionally, but it’s rare. In fact, vote fraud in America is a massive array of millions of small thefts, as votes are stolen one by one, and two by two… and occasionally, just occasionally, by 44.
Pavel soon learned that Stalin was right: "It doesn't matter who votes. What matters is who counts the votes." The party who controls the process controls the results.… In a thousand different ways.
Voting registrars can register fake names for real addresses, then request absentee ballots on behalf of those names, enabling the casting of ten votes from a house where only two people reside.
The system can look the other way as people with two homes vote from each one, sometimes in the same election. College students do it, legally, by registering both at home and at college, then choosing which one to vote in, each cycle. It’s only really immoral if you vote from both addresses the same day… which many do. Pavel remembered the statistics showing tens of thousands of people with homes in both Florida and New York, who often vote from both places in the same election.
He remembered learning of how local bureaucrats in the big cities – Chicago, New Orleans, etc. – fill up buses with patronage workers and their spouses and siblings, to drive them around town all day, going from polling place to polling place, giving them a new name and address to cast their votes from each time. Pockets cackled when he told Pavel about that one… Rather than being afraid to commit a crime when surrounded by witnesses, the presence of all those fellow criminals just reinforces their comfort in this particular brand of lawbreaking. Man, how old Mayor Morial of New Orleans must have sobbed when he saw all those hundreds of school buses destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, with an election around the corner.
Pavel learned how federal judges in places like St. Louis jump on any opportunity to claim voting problems, so they can justify keeping the polling places in certain neighborhoods open – only in certain neighborhoods – late into the night, giving the organization a chance to get people to cast a new vote in the names of the day’s no-shows. Once the polls are closed, you don’t have to fear using other people’s real names, because they can’t show up – so you give their names and addresses to whichever minions arrive.
Pavel learned how Democrat Party powerhouses schedule their elections so soon after the primaries that it becomes impossible for Americans living abroad to participate in the election. The MOVE Act notwithstanding, hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and their families, stationed abroad, are effectively barred from voting in general elections… oh, they vote, but it’s often for naught, because the timeline simply doesn’t allow for their ballots to reach home in time to be counted on Election Day.
Pavel stopped short, and looked around. He’d been lost in his reminiscences, and he’d walked right past the front door of the polling place, which was always in the lobby of a local grammar school.
He turned around and headed back. Odd that the signs and American flags hadn’t caught his eye and brought him back to the present…
But there was nothing there. No polling place. Just a sign in the window: “VOTERS: Please go around back, to door 7.”
Door seven? Who knew there was a door 7? This was a broad school; walking around it might take a while. Wishing he had taken the car, Pavel walked all around to the back of the campus.
Sure enough, with just one small American flag stuck in the ground, and a small sign on the door – “Vote Here!” – he saw the entry next to the playground, completely hidden from the street for the first time in years. He found his way in, and asked what turnout was like. “Low. Surprisingly low, considering fierce gubernatorial contests in both parties.” Pavel thought for a moment… it wasn’t that surprising.
Pavel was in the suburbs now, so he couldn’t go into the city and visit Pockets – the old Deputy Committeeman of the 51st Ward – for another of his impromptu lessons (how sad Pockets had been to learn that the Syerovs had moved out of the city; he had always said Pavel would be alderman someday).
But he could imagine how the conversation would go. As Pavel walked home alone, he pictured the old days, and imagined bringing Pockets a cold one from the back, watching the old pol scatter his pearls of wisdom as he sputtered pretzel crumbs and swigged his beer:
“Paully, my boy, what brings you here today?”
“A question, Pockets. A question.”
“Ask away!”
“When the Party works so hard to increase turnout, why move a polling place to make it more inconvenient? Doesn’t the Party do best when the turnout is high?”
Pockets would sit back, and smile, and maybe light a cigar, then ask his own questions: “What kind of a precinct is it, Paully, my boy? Is it a Democrat precinct, or a Republican precinct?”
Hmm…. Hadn’t thought of that. Pavel had lived in the city so long, he always thought that high turnout always helped the Democrats. But of course, he now reasoned, it would depend on the makeup of the district, wouldn’t it?
Pavel would have to be diplomatic. “It’s a suburban precinct, Pockets. Probably half and half. Maybe an edge to the GOP.”
And Pockets would sit back, and take a good long drag on his cigar. “Well, that explains it, doesn’t it? We can’t be making it too easy for those Republicans to vote. Depress the turnout in the Republican neighborhoods; increase the turnout in the Democrat neighborhoods. That’s the name of the game, Paully.”
“I thought that was what ‘Get Out The Vote’ programs were for.”
“Well, sure, Paully, that’s part of it. But politics is a thousand things put together. You don’t win an election on one great commercial or a blanketing of yard signs. It’s a little of this and a little of that…. Calling people, sending mailers to the dependable voters, sending cars to drive the undependable ones… keeping the polls open late in our precincts, trying to close them early in the other side’s… winning hobos’ votes with free liquor, lunches or cigarettes, whatever the hobo’s weakness might be. It’s a mix, Paully.”
“And so,” Pavel would interject, “the placement of a polling place itself, while totally legal and unassailable, can be a part of the management of an election too, huh?”
“You bet, sonny!” Pavel could imagine the old man whirling around and drawing on his white board, as he listed their techniques. “Our polling places are nursing homes, retirement homes, hospitals, park district buildings, senior centers. Anyplace where our voters are likely to hang out. That boosts our side’s turnout.” Pockets would crack open another beer and continue: “And what can we do to the Republicans? We can’t put their polling places in the sanitation centers or the forest preserves, as much as we’d like to… but we can make it inconvenient for them! If the only logical place is a school, then instead of putting the polling place in the front lobby, we stick it in the back, hidden from the street, so that people forget all about the election and drive right by!”
“How many votes do you think a thing like that would cost the Republicans?”, Pavel would ask his old friend.
“Depends on the voter’s level of commitment, Paully… how much of a hurry he’s in, how much he wants to vote for the people on the ballot. Sometimes they’ll drive right by, sometimes they’ll go around to the back and find the place. Every time we move a precinct’s polling place, the turnout drops a little. Every little bit helps, you know. Let’s say it’s a Republican precinct with only 250 people of voting age, and a hundred of them intend to show up to vote. If we turn away ten by making it a little harder to find, and those ten break two/thirds Republican, one/third Dem.. then we’ve cost the right a net three or four votes that day. That’s three or four points, right there. Change it in November, and people would cry foul, but if you change it in an relatively low-turnout primary, hey… three or four points, Paully, they're ours for the taking!”
Pavel stopped short, right there on the sidewalk, as he imagined that moment of the conversation with his old mentor. Three or four points can be flipped – legally – by Cook County just playing games with the locations of our polling places. And that’s probably conservative.
Three or four points. How many elections are decided by just three or four points? Or less? How about the very presidency, last time? And that's just one method, out of so many that the Democrats use to steer the elections in their direction, even in a nation in which they're on the wrong side of the public on so very many issues…
Pavel didn’t know what worried him more: this realization of yet another previously unnoticed method of Democrat election chicanery, or the realization that he knew the mind of corrupt old Chicago machine politicians so well, he couldn't help channeling their thoughts in his head on a sunny Chicagoland election day.
Oh well, he thought… he’d sure have something to talk about in his graduate political science class when he returned to school after the break.
Copyright 2018 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland based international trade trainer, writer, and actor. His columns regularly appear in Illinois Review.
The characters in this column, as in all the tales of Little Pavel, are fictional, and no relationship to real persons, alive or dead, is intended or implied… but the election chicanery that these tales relate is all too real. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut, and the IR URL and byline are included.
