The investigation uncovered a variety of voter-fraud techniques.
Preying on the Disabled and Elderly. ...
Impersonating Absent Voters. ...
Registering Aliens. ...
False Registrations. ...
Casting Fraudulent Absentee Ballots. ...
Buying Votes. ...
Altering the Vote Count. ...
Lessons Learned
Three factors, in particular, contributed to the successful electoral fraud of former Mayor Daley's political machine.
Interference by Party Officials.Precinct captains in Chicago did not work for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. They were political appointees of the ward committeemen and therefore answered only to the committeemen and their political party. A precinct captain's loyalty was not to running a clean and fair election but to the political party that controlled his ward. Despite not working for the election board, precinct captains often opened and supervised the polls on election day and directed or influenced the door-to-door canvasses "required by law in order to determine the accuracy of voter registration."[46]
Because the election board approved all of the individuals submitted by the precinct captains and their political party to serve as official election judges, the precinct captains controlled the polling places even though it was the election judges who were legally responsible for the administration of each polling place. This patronage system tied the administration of elections into the political system that ran the city and dispensed jobs. This structure, in turn, created the means and the incentive to "steal votes on Election Day."[47]
Lack of a Bipartisan Election System. Chicago witnessed the complete failure of its "bipartisan system [that] is meant to protect the election process from vote fraud."[48] This system assumes that there are two active political parties, each watching the other and overseeing all activities that occur during the election process, from voter registration to the administration of polling places on election day, to ensure that the law is followed and no fraud occurs.
For example, the canvasses that occurred before the election to check the accuracy of the voter registration list would provide "the intended bipartisan checks and balances only if it is conducted by two people representing opposite parties."[49] But in Chicago, the Republican Party was not strong enough in many sections of the city to function as a counterbalance to the Democratic Party. As a result, Chicago's voter registration list did not receive bipartisan scrutiny and contained many ineligible persons, including voters who had moved, were deceased, were not U.S. citizens, did not reside where they were registered, or were registered in more than one location.
Similarly, there were supposed to be both Democratic and Republican judges of election in the Chicago polling places, but many of the "Republican" slots were actually filled by Democrats masquerading as Republicans who had been chosen by the Democratic precinct captains. As a result, the "Republican" canvassers and election judges actually assisted their Democratic counterparts in committing fraud.[50]
Biased or Inexperienced Poll Watchers. Poll watchers are intended to be the guardians of a clean election "by participating as critical observers."[51] A well-trained and vigilant poll watcher should have been able to spot some of the
To reduce the incidence of voter fraud, the grand jury made three concrete recommendations:
- Sever the relationship between party precinct captains and election judges. Judges hired by the election board to conduct canvasses and administer polling places on election day should be paid professionals whose loyalty and responsibility are to the election board, not to the local political party or elected city officials.
- Require all voters to provide a thumbprint when registering and when voting. Voters would place a thumbprint on a small pretreated box on the ballot application (not the ballot itself) when they vote. According to the grand jury, this was the only way to counter the widespread forgery of voters' signatures that occurred in this voter fraud conspiracy. The grand jury pointed out the virtues of this protection:
No fingerprint would be placed on the actual ballot; therefore, the ballot would still be totally secret as it is now. The voter would not be required to put his finger in ink in order to register his print. The process is totally clean and is not intrusive. Many banks already use this identifying process on check cashing cards to verify the identity of the card user.
Requiring a print on every ballot application would be a tremendous deterrent to vote fraud and no more of an invasion of privacy than a handwritten signature. It is impossible to forge a print. Fingerprint experts cannot be fooled. If the precinct captain voted for absent voters using the prints of paid volunteers, for example, the print of the absent voter could be compared with the print on the ballot application. If people in the polling place participated in the fraud by placing their prints in the boxes, they would be readily identifiable.[57]
The advantages of this system are obvious, particularly since it would eliminate the difficulty of trying to determine who forged a signature and thus cast a fraudulent ballot on election day or a fraudulent absentee ballot through the mail.
- Void ballots after counting them. In the Chicago fraud, ballot outcomes were altered by running the same Democratic punch card ballot through a precinct tally machine multiple times. The grand jury suggested that counting machines be altered to "irrevocably mark each counted ballot" to prevent it from being run through the machine again.
Although most jurisdictions have moved away from punch card voting machines since the 2000 presidential election, the paper ballots and precinct-based optical scanners used in many states today are subject to the same type of abuse.
