EXTRA: ‘Early voting’ for a few, nothing for the electoral masses

If you happen to live in Evanston to the north, Berwyn to the west, or Calumet City or Dolton to the south, then Monday is a day of significance.

ORR:Staff among few aware elections are forthcoming

It’s the first day you can show up at an early voting center and cast ballots for the Feb. 28 primary elections being held in those municipalities.

THEY ALL HAVE mayors or aldermanic posts up for grabs, and those are the few communities that have formal primary elections – even though most of them are dominated by Democratic Party political structure. Most don’t have Republican parties, even in theory.

Meaning that the primary will mean more than the April 5 general election, which will be just a formality for the primary winners to actually begin governing again come May 1.

Most other suburbs have purely nonpartisan political structures, meaning they just have the one election in the springtime during which everything is up for grabs. The majority of voters can be completely oblivious to electoral politics, if they so choose. Although I'd argue they maintain such ignorance at their own risk!

Those of you dedicated enough to cast an early ballot can do so at the voting centers being maintained by the Cook County clerk’s office from now through Feb. 27 – with the usual polling places opening the following day; Election Day itself!

NOT THAT ANY of this means a thing if you’re among the one-third of Chicago-area residents who actually reside in Chicago. For this is the one electoral cycle in which city residents get a break.

Nothing up for grabs, and local government elections not scheduled again until 2019.

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EXTRA: Illinois’ political high point? It seems to be Cook County!

The highest elevation in Illinois is the Charles Mound not far from Galena, but when it comes to a political sense I’m wondering if the high point is right here in Cook County.
 

ORR: Oversaw record-high voter turnout

It might even be somewhere around suburban Oak Park. That is, if we look at the statistics available for voter turnout and electoral support for the Nov. 8 elections that are becoming a more distant memory with each passing day – albeit one that we’re never likely to forget entirely.

THE COOK COUNTY clerk’s office released its analysis of the election turnout that showed this was an election cycle in which the people cared. If Hillary Clinton wants to find a “fall guy” for her Election Day defeat, she had better not look to the county of her birth.

We turned out, and we backed her presidential aspirations big-time!

For the record, Hillary Clinton got the highest number of votes ever (699,003) by a presidential candidate. Even more than Barack Obama did in that 2008 election cycle that captured the nation’s imagination (or contempt, for the kind of people who are inclined to believe that Donald Trump’s victory was their revenge for having to endure eight years of an Obama presidency).

Oak Park Township in the western suburbs had an 83.4 percent voter turnout.

BUT TURNOUT WAS high all over the county. There were 1.51 million people registered to vote before Election Day, and another 24,000-plus showed up at polling places and registered to vote that very day.

With Cook County Clerk David Orr justifying that by saying, “More than 24,000 residents who wouldn’t have been able to cast a ballot were able to vote as a direct result of Election Day Registration.”

Those figures are records for Cook County voter turnout, although it will be interesting to see if they can be topped come the 2020 election cycle. Or was this phenomenon truly a product of the freakish nature of the ’16 Clinton/Trump brawl that I’m pretty sure no one has recovered from as of yet.

Voter turnout was high all the way around, but as one ventured outside of the Chicago metro area the more that the high turnout produced political support for Trump, rather than Hillary.

BUT COOK’S HIGH population (about 45 percent of the whole state) is why Hillary won Illinois with ease, while the bulk of the Great Lakes states was swayed over to Camp Trump.

So perhaps it is all the more appropriate that the low elevation point of Illinois is the point where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge – down by Cairo.

A low-point, in so many ways, for Democrats

That’s the part where Trump support was so strong that it helped translate into the few Republican electoral victories this state experienced this time around.

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Just over 80 days away ‘til Election Day (already?!?), at least for some of us

We’ve barely finished the “Election cycle from Hell” (or so it felt like), and yet we’re already coming up on the next set of government posts for which we’ll be asked to cast ballots.

At least some of us will be.

IT’S TRUE. THERE will be positions up for grabs within various units of government. Most of them will be decided on April 4, although in places where a primary election is a necessity, that will occur on Feb. 28.

Not that most of us will give these elections much thought.

Because, by and large, these are municipal elections, and they’re not even complete.

For many suburban communities that have their local government entities split their city councils/village boards/whatever call themselves so that half of them got elected to four-year terms in 2015 – with the other half to be chosen this year.

TO MAKE IT more confusing, it will vary from municipality to municipality as to their chief executive (their mayor, village president, town chief or whatever) is up for grabs.

In some suburbs, their local bosses will be picked this year. In others, it was already picked and this is just to fill out the local village board. Candidates seeking to be on an April 4 ballot will have to declare their candidacies beginning Monday – with nominating petitions needing to be filed by Dec. 19.

In short, one will have to check our your specific town to see if there’s anybody even up for re-election. Or your local school boards, which usually manage to pick the same hacks over and over regardless if they know anything about education issues. In many cases, the chances are that the incumbents will run unopposed. We’ll know more come the Christmas holiday.

There are a lot of long-term suburban mayors because usually there’s nobody else interested in holding the position, Heck, in some cases the mayor/village president/whatever is merely a part-time post that only pays a token salary to cover a few expenses – and the person usually has a real job by day.

BEING THE MAYOR usually means cutting some ribbons at public ceremonies, and being the guy who gets to wield the gavel at council meetings.

In some cases, the daily operations of the local government is actually run by a government professional that carries a title of village administrator or city manager or something like that. With the difference in titles being the degree to which the professional has the authority to hire people without needing the formal approval of the part-time elected officials.

These are always low-turnout elections. The 70.65 percent voter turnout we saw last month in Illinois (about 75 percent in Cook County) for president will be a mere fantasy come February and April – we’ll be lucky if 20 percent of the register voters bother to show up to cast ballots.

Many people who live in suburbs don’t have the slightest clue who their local government officials are. And when it comes to the city, this is an election cycle we’ll get to sit out.

WE CHOSE RAHM Emanuel and all 50 aldermen back in 2015. So we in Chicago will be spared a certain level of nonsense. The campaign rhetoric will be restricted to positions that most people probably won’t have a clue what it is they really do to justify their existence.

Which is probably a break that city residents need to help us recover from the recently-completed election cycle.

After all, we turned out strong in Chicago proper and gave overwhelming support to Hillary Clinton’s presidential dreams – with some parts of Chicago giving as little as 2 percent voter support to President-elect Donald J. Trump. Only to find out that it wasn’t enough to ensure her Election Day victory.

Besides, we’ll get a nasty enough electoral fight that will come soon enough in 2018 when we have to decide on a governor for Illinois and all the other statewide Constitutional offices – without the added attraction of a U.S. Senate seat or presidential race to draw out voters to the polling places.

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EXTRA: Were we Ill. from lack of Election Day in 2015 like Ind. had?

We'll have to wait 'til March to vote

Personally, Election Day came Tuesday and kept me sort of busy because of my duties for a Northwest Indiana newspaper – I got to write about the return for another term of Gary, Ind.’s Ivy League educated mayor and the political comeback of the daughter of that city’s long-time mayor, Richard Hatcher.

Yet I do wonder how many people didn’t miss it in the least that we in Illinois didn’t have anybody to cast ballots for come Tuesday.

FOR THIS WAS a year in which our municipal elections got crammed into a short period – February (for those who needed to have something resembling a primary) and April (for the final vote).

Those of us in municipalities that had local officials up for grabs (not just in Chicago) picked our people back in April – with most of the newly elected (or returned to office) officials being sworn in some time about May 1.

Election Day? That’s long over, if we even bothered to pay attention at all!

I seem to recall voter turnout stunk back in April – even for the Rahm Emanuel/Jesus Garcia political brawl that was supposed to be a revolutionary overthrow of a tyrant but instead merely turned into an ego-boosting rout for Mayor Rahm.

SO IT WAS with that knowledge in mind that I read Cook County Clerk David Orr’s statement on Friday that emphasized how much cheaper things were without the clerk having to deal with municipal elections on Tuesday.

Some $4 million per year for the nine municipal election cycles that have come up ever since the current electoral system was devised in 1997.

Personally, I wonder if isolating those municipal elections so much makes it harder to draw public attention to them. Then again, doing it the old-fashioned way as they did in Indiana didn’t boost attention.

Lake County, Ind., officials estimate about 15 percent voter turnout, and I saw some precincts in Gary where the total number of voters could be counted on one individual’s fingers and toes!

FOR THOSE OF us in Illinois, our next chance to vote will be March 15 – a primary for the Legislature seats, along with the Senate, members of Congress. And, oh yeah, for president.

He won't be around in '16

Although I suspect the Illinois story is going to be how our voter turnout will stink compared to the last two presidential election cycles. We won’t have our “favorite son” candidate on the ballot – and there’s a good chance the total of mediocrities and nobodies seeking the presidential nominations in both major parties will not be able to inspire anyone to vote.

That likely will be the same come May in Indiana. Once again, our states will be united in something!

Even if it’s nothing but a collective apathy.

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Why should we bother to vote if there isn’t much (if any) of a choice?

I have written many a commentary at this weblog whose purpose was to tell people to get up off their bulbous buttocks and show up on Election Day to cast a ballot.

Yet I have to admit that the political people who offer themselves up as our choices for electoral office often give us little reason to want to vote for them. In many cases, they give us absolutely no choice to the point where casting a vote seems like a waste of time.

A CONCEPT THAT I find to be abhorrent, because I really do believe that casting a vote is a civic duty and that people who can’t be bothered to vote deserve to be ignored by their government officials.

Many of those officials are going to do that regardless. But should we really give them the reason that justifies their inaction in their own minds?

Part of what has me thinking about this “to vote, or not to vote” issue is the fact that early voting for the April 7 run-off elections in Chicago and the actual municipal elections out in the suburbs begins Monday.

Next week and the week after will be when the city Board of Elections and the Cook County clerk’s office will maintain the early voting centers for those people who don’t want to wait until the actual Election Day to cast their ballots.

RECENT ELECTION CYCLES show that many people who care enough about an election actually use them. It may well be that the actual voter turnout on April 7 will be ridiculously low.

I suspect that many of the 66 percent of registered voters in Chicago who didn’t bother to cast a ballot back on the Feb. 24 municipal election date still won’t be motivated to act.

All I know is that if Rahm Emanuel gets re-elected mayor with a City Council consisting of a majority of sympathetic aldermen, there is bound to be some sort of clown who argues that the current mayor has a “mandate” to pursue his policies.

That’s nuts!

IT JUST MEANS that apathy prevails because people didn’t feel the opposition was vocal enough to justify much of a vote against the establishment. It doesn’t mean we love Rahm by any means. If Jesus Garcia can’t fully take advantage of that, then he doesn’t deserve a mayoral win by default.

There are also the suburbs, where the county clerk’s office issued a statement this week pointing out that 63 percent of the positions up for election in the suburbs have candidates running unopposed. That includes nine of 19 suburban mayors/village presidents.

Although in many cases, it should be noted that the suburban mayors were up for re-election in 2013 along with a portion of their city councils/village boards. This election is mostly for the remaining portions of aldermen/trustees.

Meaning you really have to be a political junkie of a respective municipality in order to get all worked up over who is running. I suspect many suburban residents won’t be.

THIS GOT REINFORCED in my mind last week when I got a long-overdue haircut and found out that the woman who cuts my hair (she conveniently works about one block from where I live) also is the regular hairstylist for a municipal candidate in my area.

She told me stories about how she had been cutting his hair since he was 7 years old (he’s now 30) and knew him very well, yet doubted she would be voting for him on Election Day.

“All I want to do is cut hair,” she told me, explaining she had never bothered to vote in her life and didn’t feel any need to start doing so now. The part of me who writes these commentaries here could come up with many theoretical reasons why she ought to be concerned.

Yet I have to admit her attitude probably is prevalent in our society because way too many of these candidates can’t give us a legitimate reason why we ought to support them. They ought to have to earn our support, rather than thinking they’re entitled to it!

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From who do we get to pick Nov. 4?

I found it amusing to learn of the lottery held this week by the Cook County clerk’s office to determine top ballot position for the Nov. 4 general election to be held in Illinois.

ORR: Fodder for conspiracy theorists?

The Democrats came out on top, meaning that for every position up for grabs, the Democratic Party nominee will be listed. Then the Republican. Then, any candidates of alternative political parties – assuming any are able to make it through the political process that is heavily stacked against them.

SO WHEN IT comes to governor, it will be Pat Quinn, followed by Bruce Rauner, followed by whoever is able to file enough nominating petitions that even a rigged process can’t justify jettisoning them.

Cook County Clerk David Orr’s office felt so compelled to show they didn’t rig this lottery that they put a video of the process out on You Tube. You can watch it yourself – although I’m sure those amongst you who want to believe the worst won’t believe what you see.

Just like those people who think the moon landing was rigged, as well.

Orr’s office says we won’t know who the third party candidates will be until some time around August. That’s when the final ballot will be certified.

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE those amongst us who don’t pay any attention to those names anyway.

 

Green Party nominee Scott Summers? Libertarian Chad Grimm? Constitutional Party candidate Michael Oberline (who likes to use photographs of himself in his Marine Corps uniform to tout his political bid)?

Maybe they’ll each get a percent of the vote. Or maybe they’ll combine to take 1 percent.

QUINN: He wins, for now

Personally, I got to meet recently Ilona Gersh, an activist and factory worker in suburban Dolton who says she’s running for governor on the Socialist Workers Party.

SHE SAYS THERE’S so little difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to issues that really matter that people shouldn’t think of the campaign as Quinn versus Rauner. They ought to be looking toward the rest of the ballot.

Then again, she talks openly of her admiration for the 1959 revolution that saw Fidel Castro take control of Cuba and for how Malcolm X is a seriously-misunderstood figure in our society.

Points that could be debated, if people wanted to spend time pondering the issues. Although I suspect most will write her off, along with the other third party candidates. Because engaging in deep thought is headache-inducing.

RAUNER: Will he overcome Cook lottery?

Then again, these may be some of the same people who actually do just vote for whichever name comes out on top of the ballot for each political post. There just doesn’t seem to be any third-party candidate as of yet who is grabbing our attention away from Monsieurs Quinn and/or Rauner.

WHICH MEANS THAT Cook County putting Quinn on top (along with Richard Durbin for U.S. Senate and every other Dem for state and countywide office) may be one of those stupid little factors that boosts the incumbent governor’s vote tally by a percent or two.

Which could be just enough to help him prevail overall.

Because while some people look at the maps and see one tiny little blotch of a county in the far northeast corner of Illinois, that county does account for about 45 percent of the state’s overall population.

And one that can be heavily motivated to turn out the vote, compared to the mass of small counties across the rest of the state that must combine their mass in order to keep up with the support Cook County can give to Quinn – if it chooses to do so.

Third party candidates for Nov. 4 are ...

WHICH IS WHY the Rauner campaign’s strategy really seems like one meant to induce apathy toward the upcoming activities of Nov. 4.

Get enough people to decide it doesn’t matter (or to think like the socialist that there’s no real difference between the two major party candidates) and not to vote, and maybe he can just depress the vote totals enough to prevail.

I’m not about to guess on May 9 what will happen on Nov. 4. We have nearly six full months, and who’s to say what will crop up that will capture the hearts and minds of the electorate.

But wouldn’t it be the ultimate joke if one of the determining factors was a lottery by David Orr held on the day that was Indiana’s primary election day?

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Rose, Ventra tops 1st gay marriage

I’m not surprised by the news judgment used by Chicago’s two metro newspapers on Tuesday.

Rose tops marriage, ...

The fact that the first legitimate marriage of a gay couple will take place sometime this week – about seven months prior to the date the new law goes into effect – made Page One of both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.

BUT IT WASN’T the lede story. In fact, if one didn’t pay close enough attention, you’d have missed the marriage story altogether.

For the record, the Sun-Times on Tuesday thought that the BIG DEAL of the news lineup came from the world of sports – specifically the fact that Derrick Rose has suffered an injury so severe that he’s going to miss the entire season.

As in again. It’s starting to appear as though the man that Chicago Bulls fans were counting on to be the big star of teams that would win a slew of championships will be nothing more than a “never was” – as in we’ll forevermore speculate about what could have been IF ONLY he hadn’t gotten hurt.

As for the Tribune, they gave a banner headline to the latest story about how messed up the Ventra card system is. Which appeals to the people who use the Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses on a regular basis.

BECAUSE IT WOULD seriously stink if one couldn’t get to work because their fare card didn’t function properly.

Yet the occurrence this week related to gay marriage is one of those bizarre moments that it is something we all ought to be interested in – particularly if you’re one of those people who wants to wish that the issue would just go away!

... as does Ventra

For the record, the General Assembly passed a bill making marriage a legitimate option for gay couples in such a way that it can’t take effect immediately.

There was no way that 60 percent of legislators were going to agree on this issue so as to allow it to take effect immediately. It had to settle for the bare majority (60 of 118 votes), which means the new law will take effect June 1, 2014.

EXCEPT THAT A federal judge (U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin, to be exact) issued a ruling Monday that requires the Cook County clerk’s office to issue a marriage license to a pair of women who wish to marry immediately.

Derrick Rose may be gone for good

The women are not a youthful couple, and it seems they have been together for five years and got a civil union in 2011. But one of them has breast cancer severe enough that they’re not sure she will survive long enough for the couple to have a June wedding.

County Clerk David Orr has always said he supports the idea of marriage being available for all; so much so that he didn’t even fight the lawsuit the couple filed last week.

He seemed to be pleased that Judge Durkin issued the order that forced him to issue the marriage license that took effect Tuesday (the couple says they’ll marry this week).

NOT THAT I’M really bothered by the fact that the couple will marry now, rather than later. I’m sure the fact that the law didn’t take effect immediately was one of the few “victories” the conservative ideologues were feeling these days.

But it does make me wonder about the long-term effect on the provisions of state law that require a higher level of support for bills passed after the General Assembly completes its spring session.

Some wish these cards would go away instead

I recall one time that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, specifically thwarted the interests of firearms advocates by requiring one of their bills to get a 60 percent majority – a vote total they could not possibly achieve.

Officials say the ruling by Durkin is so narrow that it shouldn’t impact other cases – or other couples wanting to get married before June 1. But have we managed to undo some sense of our legal procedure? Yet another reason we’ll be confused in the future!

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For the suburbs, the “big day” is April 5

It has been a point of confusion for many people who live in the 128 other municipalities that comprise Cook County, or the roughly 140 cities, towns and villages that comprise the collar county suburbs.

Suburban officials Cynthia Doorn and ...



For most of those people, Tuesday is just Tuesday. There’s nothing electoral about it.

MOST OF THOSE places operate under electoral laws by which they need a surplus of candidates to have any need for initial and run-off elections for this particular municipal cycle. There are also many suburban towns that had their elections  in 2009 – which means they’re not due for a chance for another two years.

So most of those local government posts in the Chicago suburbs that are up for grabs this year won’t come up for another month. Which means that we’re in a situation where the city will vote for its officials on one day, and the suburbs will pick their local leaders on another date.

There are the lone exceptions in Cook County, where the clerk’s office is going to have to maintain polling places in two south suburban villages.

In both Dolton and South Holland, four people are running for seats on the village board. It was because of those two elections that the county clerk’s office had to maintain an early voting center through last week in the latter village.

IT IS BECAUSE of those two elections that Clerk David Orr will have a miniscule role to play, keeping track of the votes counted in the 48 precincts in those two suburbs combined, before he can call it a night and go home.

... Willie Lowe will be the few with Tuesday  jitters



Rev. Willie Lowe of Dolton (one of Assessor Joe Berrios’ backers in last year’s countywide election cycle) and Cynthia Doorn of South Holland are the two suburban officials trying to get re-elected who will experience Election Night jitters on Tuesday.

Everybody else will be waiting for Tuesday to end so they can start their serious campaigning for the April elections.

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ELECTION DAZE: Where’s ideological “war”? It looks like apathy

I find it laughable the way that nationally-oriented political pundits are trying to read more into Illinois’ primary elections results than they’re worth.

People are looking for evidence that Barack Obama is being repudiated – particularly in his home state.

BUT WHEN I look at the results of our local elections, there are two statistics that pop up. They are 24.8 and 22.9. Those are the percentages that tell how many local people actually bothered to show up at the polling places (either on Tuesday or through early voting) to cast ballots.

The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners says that 24.8 percent of the 1,444,277 registered voters in the city cast ballots. By comparison, the Cook County clerk’s office says that 22.9 percent of suburban registered voters bothered to vote.

In all, just over 670,000 people who live in Cook County, Ill., cast ballots. When one considers that the number of registered voters tallies just under 2.9 million, all I have to say is that is pathetic. What is the real story from Tuesday - the confusion about who will get to do the "people's business" at the Capitol Complex in Springfield for the next few years, or the fact that just over three of every four Chicago-area registered voters didn't care enough to vote?

For all those people who want to see ideological warfare in our election results, all I see are a batch of people who seem to regard this election cycle the same way that Rhett Butler regarded Scarlett O’Hara.

SOME PEOPLE ARE going to argue that this apathy is ideological. The “people” are telling us they don’t want anybody from among the choices they have been offered in this election cycle.

But I think this is more a case of the short primary election cycle (which will create an equal and opposite reaction of a longer-than-usual general election cycle) killing off any attempt to seriously get to know what the candidates are about. So many people decided to do nothing.

They found better ways to spend their Tuesday, which in the parts of the Chicago area I ventured into was a cloudy, overcast day with light snowfall trickling down.

I had trouble finding people who were seriously interested in discussing issues or candidates in this election cycle. I wasn’t alone. Many of the people I spoke to throughout the day who were at polling places also noted the mere trickle of people who showed up to vote.

SO I JUST can’t take seriously the idea that this election cycle offers any “message” the way that certain pundits are determined to say that the special Massachusetts election of recent weeks sent a message. For one thing, this is a primary election – with the general election to be held nine months from now.

That election may send a message. Or it may just send a batch of elected officials from Chicago and Illinois to Springfield and Washington, along with those headed for the City Hall/County Building.

If anything, I am more intrigued by how close this election cycle turned out for the Illinois governor primaries. It means that nobody seems to have a grasp on what the “people” want. I only hope we don’t get into some drawn-out fight that involves recounts that drags out and causes people to act stupidly for ideological reasons. I can't envision anyone winning by more than 5 percent, which means a recount could be a legal option.

The lesson I remember from the 2000 elections is that the public will soon start griping about “when will it all end,” and will be willing to allow anything to happen – regardless of whether it represents the will of the people (which in today’s era is really a case of not being able to agree on much of anything).

THERE ALSO IS the general election campaign for U.S. Senate – Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias versus Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. Will Giannoulias’ friendship with Obama result in enough support that he wins the Senate seat that Obama himself once held?

Or will Illinois voters really want to send “messages” in November and vote against anything connected to Barack?

Not that Kirk doesn’t have his own issues to deal with. As much as his moderate views on social issues may make him appeal to voters across the state, it also makes him anathema to those conservatives who wanted an ideologue candidate but weren’t able to coalesce their support behind any one of the six challengers Kirk faced in the GOP primary.

Will Kirk get the “John McCain” treatment – many conservatives won’t turn out and vote for him and will focus their attention on thwarting a “Sen. Giannoulias?” Or will the thought of “seizing” the one-time Obama seat (which also was once held by Carol Moseley-Braun) cause them to hold their noses and cast votes for Kirk?

THOSE ARE THE questions I have. They are legitimate issues I will be spending months studying. But based on the voter turnout figures I saw, I wonder if I’m one of the few who truly cares.

I also should point out one other statistic that gives me a kick. I couldn’t help but notice that the Green Party, whose supporters like to think they’re creating a legitimate political movement in Illinois, only had 1,385 people take their ballots in the city of Chicago.

By comparison, 30,604 people who live and are registered to vote in the city asked for Republican Party ballots. Any entity that is less significant than a Chicago Republican is one that is best ignored come Election Day.

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