Thursday, November 11, 2004

Why the Dead Vote

Why the Dead Vote

I'm getting a bit of flack over my unsubstantiated statement yesterday that the result included "all the election fraud, all the dead and illegal voters voting against him." Since I can not rely on every reader to be a long term fan, I shall reprise my understanding of the American electoral process, as I have witnessed it over the last half century.

I have a background in actual politics, the kind that we had before the internet, before everyone became an expert. It is my experience that most American urban centers are controlled by democrat machines, and these machines commonly vote the dead, and multiple voting is more than the canard: "vote early, and often." It is the way of life, certainly in New York, and reportedly elsewhere. Also Stalin's maxim that the voters count for little, the vote counters count for far more has more than a bit of reality to it, and solidly democrat precincts have precious little in the way of opposition poll watchers. My mother was a democrat District Leader, which in New York City is a pretty powerful position, and I was therefore able, at a very young age, to watch the sausage of our political repast being made. I also have no reason to keep these secrets, since my mother is beyond the reach of any temporal punishment, and all I ever did was witness these crimes.

You might ask why a solidly democrat district needs to pad the tally for the top of the democrat ticket. The answer is simple. Each district has a slate of its own candidates for minor functionaries and, especially, judges. The judges apparently have a keen interest in the result, since they commonly, and I have with my own eyes witnessed this, pay immense amounts of cash to the district leaders in return for nomination in a "safe" district. The leaders, two in each district, therefore can take no chances on the outcome of these little elections. Sometimes independent candidates run, and, instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars to each district leader, mount actual campaigns. Sometimes, they even win. Thus, the dead return, to vote one more time. Bums, who we now call "the homeless," are sent in to play the part of dead or absent voters, and enter the voting booth with a slate of levers to pull, in return for which they are remunerated. In order to make the final tally balanced, they vote the entire ticket, not just the few specific candidates that have paid for this service. Thus, the top of the ticket is padded. The result of the presidential race is rarely, if ever, changed, since these are pretty solidly democrat precincts in the first place. But the final tally will show plenty of extra votes for the president.

During the years that I witnessed this activity on my democrat mother's side, my father was an activist on the republican side. I owe him a great debt for pointing these activities out to my brother and me. Since he was an immigrant from Europe, this type of corruption seemed reasonable to him. What impressed him far more, was that this type of shennanigans did not go on in the republican ranks. I can not say that they indeed did not, since an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I can definitely say that, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson got credit for far more votes than they deserved. Nobody doubts that they got a few extra votes in Chicago as well, and there is quite a bit of evidence out there that JFK got some help in East Texas in 1960.

Doubters might say that these activities no longer go on, that district leaders in safe districts no longer accept cash in return for their support for mediocre lawyers seeking refuge on the bench, but there are also those who believe that chickens have lips. I have no doubt that fraud of all kinds, perpetrated by those on both sides, goes on to this day. But I saw what I saw, and in my experience, only democrats have done these things, and none of the republicans I know today would participate in anything like this type of vote fraud. Your mileage may differ. But what can not be said, is that these charges are unsubstantiated. I saw with my own eyes bags of cash, and bums being paid to vote the dead, going from precinct to precinct on election day. For the record, and I know that it weakens my story, my mother gave her cash to her co-leader, or at least that is what my parents told us kids. But it is certainly true that politics ain't beanbag, and I saw it with my own eyes.