After massive voting fraud was uncovered in Chicago in 1982 and dozens of government officials went to prison for the fraud, one recommendation offered to fix the problem was to somehow tie voter's fingerprints to ballots for confirmation of legality. Voter IDs are also a form of voting security designed to hinder voting fraud but crooks who depend on fraud in elections will fight like hell against voting securities like voting IDs.
Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: 100,000 Stolen Votes in Chicago | The Heritage Foundation 4-16-08
-David Nyhan, The Boston Globe, December 16, 1982
The "Truth About Voter Fraud," according to activist groups like the Brennan Center, is that "many of the claims of voter fraud amount to a great deal of smoke without much fire…. The allegations simply do not pan out."[1]
Chicago, however, is known for its fires, and there was a roaring one there in 1982 that resulted in one of the largest voter fraud prosecutions ever conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. The telltale smoke arose out of one of the closest governor's races in Illinois history; and as for the fire, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago at the time, Daniel Webb, estimated that at least 100,000 fraudulent votes (10 percent of all votes in the city) had been cast.[2] Sixty-five individuals were indicted for federal election crimes, and all but two (one found incompetent to stand trial and another who died) were convicted. [3]
This case of voter fraud is worth studying today because it illustrates the techniques that political machines and organized political groups use to steal elections. Even in the present day, this threat is not hypothetical: Tactics similar to those documented in the Chicago case have come to light in recent elections in Philadelphia and in the states of Wisconsin and Tennessee. The Daley machine may be legendary in modern times for its election fraud prowess, but these recent cases show that the incentives and opportunities for fraud have not lessened. Guarding against these tactics can make the difference between a fair election and a stolen election, particularly where the margins of victory are narrow and just a few fraudulent votes can change the outcome. ...
Both campaigns had complained to the FBI, but the federal investigation was really sparked by a party worker from Chicago's 39th Ward who was upset by his precinct captain's broken promise to award him a city job for his participation in the vote fraud. The worker told a Chicago newspaper, and then the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, "what he knew about vote fraud in that precinct."[10]
Good reporting by the local media helped fuel the investigation. One wire story concerned "a man listed as voting at a Skid Row precinct in the 27th Ward [who] had been dead for more than two years." He was listed as living at the Arcade Hotel, and his signature was among those of 47 other voters listed as living at the hotel. However, the "[o]perators and residents of the hotel told the Sun-Times that 41 of the 47 people did not reside at the Arcade."[11]
In its reporting, the Chicago Tribune discovered that the supposed home address of three voters in the 17th Precinct of the 27th Ward was a vacant lot. The paper also discovered that votes had been cast for seven residents of a nursing home who denied having voted-their signatures on the ballot applications were all forgeries. In fact, one resident had no fingers or thumbs with which to write a signature.[12] The fraud was so blatant that the resident without fingers or thumbs "was counted as having voted twice by the end of the day."[13] Not surprisingly, Stevenson easily won the 17th Precinct, by a margin of 282 to 30.[14]
These stories illustrated what was to be a recurring theme in the grand jury investigation: the theft of identities and the casting of fraudulent votes on behalf of dead voters, prison inmates, and people who had moved, as well as forged ballots cast on behalf of the elderly and the handicapped. Even fictitious voters were invented and ballots cast in their names.
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