Stealing Elections Is Kind of Funny -- Usually

Some years back, as a young pup, I tried to lead a regime change at Kansas City's chronically corrupt Housing Authority. The revolt, not a great success by any standard, cost five of us our jobs and got me blackballed throughout City Hall--in retrospect, my best career move ever.

At the time, though, things were pretty rough. Out of work for several months, I accepted a job at the Newark, New Jersey Housing and Redevelopment Authority, in whose dim projects I grew up. As it happened, I arrived just in time for a mayoral election and got a first hand look on how to steal one. My new agency, allegedly in a "reform" mode, supported the incumbent despite the fact that he had just been indicted for fraud. No big deal for this mayor, not in Newark. Reportedly, President Jimmy Carter had intervened to quash the mayor's previous indict-ment for stashing campaigns funds in a personal Swiss bank account.

Although prohibited by federal law from doing any of the following, our agency dedicated its computers, its phones, and literally thousands of coerced man-hours to the re-election campaign. We gave new apartments to the loudest of the tenants and new appliances to the merely noisy. On election day, all thousand or so employees "volunteered" to herd the Authority's cowed and captive masses to the polls.

In the largely black projects, our volunteers handed out fliers that claimed that the challenger, himself an African-American, was planning to hire "200 killer cops" to prevent the citizens from "fighting against Reaganism." In the Italian-American senior projects, where I was assigned with old-timers Joe and Sal, we had the more benign task of escorting old ladies to the polls and assuring them of continued tenancy if the incumbent prevailed. With no one watching, my new buddies and I blew off the assignment and hung out at a donut shop across the street from the polling place. After a long day of coffee and cannolis, Sal confided in me that during a prior election, when no opposing election judge showed up at this site, he voted six times. "I was old people. I was dead people. I was all kind of people," joked Sal. When I asked what his motivation was, he stared at me like I was a not very bright child and said, "I want to keep my job." He wasn't kidding. At a staff meeting after the election, the Authority's Chief of Staff, a tyrannical Philippina whose avowed idol was Imelda Marcos, informed me and about twenty others about the incumbent's up-coming "victory breakfast."

After a few sighs and eye rolls, those assembled reached for their checkbooks. "How much?" asked one. We had all expected to be hit up for another $50 or $100 as we had throughout the campaign.

"$500 will do nicely," said the Imelda wannabe. The crowd gasped. At the time, $500 represented at least a week's take-home pay for the average staffer. "Is it mandatory?" ventured one fellow, rather meekly at that, this being the middle of a recession. "Only if you're interested in job security," Imelda deadpanned.

Fortunately, my exit strategy had already been arranged. I had accepted a Fulbright to teach at a French university and was on my way out. When it came my turn to pony up, I asked in feigned innocence, "Should I make the check payable in Swiss Francs?" Everyone laughed, Imelda louder than the others. Stealing elections has long been a source of great amusement.

Funny Business

Historically, observers of the American scene have not taken vote fraud seriously, me, alas, included. In a documentary I produced for KCPT about ten years ago--Remember Me, KC--I see now that I treated Kansas City Boss Tom Pendergast's penchant for rigging elections as humorous.

In fact, Pendergast carried the 1914 streetcar election featured in the documentary by buying votes and beating up election judges. His manipulations grew more manic over the years, culminating in 1934 when his gangster pals murdered four people in a hotly (to say the least) contested election. In the next few years alone, 259 Pendergast cronies would be found guilty of vote fraud.

History, though, does put a gloss on things. In 1948, Texas Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson seemed on the verge of defeat in his first Senate race until 203 residents in the border town of Alice, Texas voted not only at the very last minute, but also, amazingly, in alphabetical order. With 202 of the 203 voters declaring for Johnson. "Landslide Lyndon," as the humorists called him, hung on for an 87-vote victory.

In 1960, LBJ and his buddies were up to their old tricks once more. For instance, the 4,895 voters registered voters in Texas's Fannin County cast 6,138 votes, almost all of them for JFK-LBJ. The ticket carried the state by a mere 25,000 votes. Meanwhile, in the celebrated "vote-early, vote-often" wards of Chicago, merry prankster Mayor Richard Daley managed to squeeze out enough votes to give JFK a 4,480-vote margin statewide.

Although the loss of those two states cost Richard Nixon the election, the depth of the fraud was never fully mined. In an unusually principled gesture, for Nixon anyhow, he chose not to put the nation through a recount. Seemingly absolved, the Camelot crowd and their media cronies were soon enough joking about these electoral shenanigans.

The More Things Change

In the years since, the mischief has continued, especially here in Missouri. A few years back, I moder-ated a primary debate for Jackson County Prosecutor at an inner-city church. During the Q&A, the crowd flustered the candidates by citing one case after another of electoral malarkey by a certain political club. Unfortunately for the citizens, both of the world-be prosecutors had eagerly sought the club's endorsement and weren't overly squeamish about how it harvested votes.

The party hacks on the other end of the state are, if anything, even more mischievous. On the afternoon of November 7, 2000, a politico by the name of Robert D. Odom applied for an extension of the voting hours because of the alleged long lines and broken machines. At 6:30 PM Judge Evelyn Baker ordered polls in St. Louis to stay open three additional hours.

Two problems here. For one, Baker's decision came out of judicial left field. The state court of appeals quashed it by 7:45. For another, there was no such person as Robert D. Odom. Senator Kit Bond called this maneuver "a major criminal enterprise designed to defraud voters," but the media quickly blew it off. After all, those extra 45 minutes of Odom-voting pos-sibly cost John Ashcroft the Senate and likely cost Jim Talent the governorship, neither of whom the media much liked in the first place.

Fictitious Times

It may be impolite of me to point this out, but there are some patterns here. For one, those who suffer most are the inner-city residents who struggle to reform the system from within. For another, naw, I won't say it. Hate to make enemies.

 

Jack Cashill is Ingram's Executive Editor and has affiliated with the magazine for 25 years. He can be reached at jackcashill@yahoo.com. The views expressed in this column are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram's Magazine.