Election Night could turn out to be an electoral educational experience

I’ll be the first to admit I pay far too much attention to the details by which we elect people to political office. But it still always manages to shock me a bit the degree to which the voters don’t truly comprehend the way our system works.

Signs like these will be in abundance on Tuesday

It takes the off-beat Election Nights in order to get people to see all the ways in which things can go haywire. And then, their usual reaction is to complain about how someone must be behaving corruptly.

IT CAN’T JUST be the complications of counting up all the ballots that the electorate manages to cast – as though they think we’re entitled to have an accurate computation of the ballots within minutes of the polls closing! Anything else must be the result of someone ‘cooking’ the books – most likely to benefit the corrupt ‘Machine’ candidates.

Even though the days of the old “Machine politics” in Chicago really is dead and buried. If things really were that rigidly controlled by the establishment, there’s no way we’d have 14 candidates running for mayor on Tuesday, and the potential for chaos that we could see.

What’s at stake is the fact that we have so many candidates and the likelihood that no one is going to take an overwhelming count of the vote in their favor.

Which means this is an election that will be so close, we’re likely to see absentee ballots – those people who fill out their form at home and send them in through the U.S. Postal Service to the Board of Elections – come into play.

ELECTIONS BOARD OFFICIALS admit some 63,000 such ballots have been requested, with only 26,000 of them having been sent back in by Monday.

That makes for some 37,000 people contemplating filing their ballot by mail, but literally waiting until the absolute last minute before submitting it. Which according to the law, is Tuesday. The ballots have to be put in the mail box in time so they can get a Tuesday, Feb. 26 post mark. Which means they won’t even be received by city officials until week’s end.

Or, if you’re in a particularly sarcastic mode of thought, some time next month – if the Postal Service lives up to its usual standards of pokey delivery time.

A touch of privacy, while ensuring poll watchers can see no illicit activity

Meaning it would be downright irresponsible for anybody to think that the election tallies available to be counted Tuesday night will be the final outcome. There’s bound to be a cluster of candidates crammed at the top of the vote tallies so as to make it unrealistic to say just who the Top Two vote getters will be.

YOU ALSO JUST know that whoever finishes third or fourth is bound to clutch to the belief that all the mail-in ballots will contain enough voter support to push them over the top and into the run-off election to be held April 2.

It’s going to be oh, so strange for those people who tune into a 9 p.m. television newscast Tuesday expecting to learn who won – only to be told it might be too close to call.

They won’t want to understand, because they’ve become too used to expecting Election Night results by then – with candidates making victory or concession speeches during the 9 p.m. hour, and thinking of anyone who refuses to make such a statement by then as being some sort of sore loser who just can’t face reality.

When the reality really is this can be a complex process to ensure that all votes are properly counted. It will take time. That could be the lesson of Election 2019 – just as Election 2000 was the one that made many of us realize just how easily it was for a ballot to be tampered with to the point of being uncountable.

REMEMBER ALL THE talk of “hanging chads?” And how repulsed the "W." Bush people were that they couldn't immediately celebrate their political victory -- trying concoct scenarios in which none-other-than Bill Daley himself was trying to stead a "win" away from them?

I still do, and must admit that what through me for a loop was that many people weren’t more fully aware of this. Just as I’m sure now many really expect all the hundreds of thousands of voters who cast ballots Tuesday can all be fully accounted for within an hour or two.

Just an example of the off-beat locations pressed into polling place duty

There is, however, one plus. If it really takes a couple of weeks before we can be sure exactly who won Tuesday and by how much, it’s going to mean that the run-off election is coming to come up on us right away.

There just won’t be that much time left for the two mayoral finalists to campaign against each other. As far as I’m concerned, that makes for few political cheap-shots and rhetorical attacks against each other – good riddance!

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Donald Trump spared humiliation of being dumped on by Latino vote

In the end, Donald Trump was very much a typical Republican running for U.S. president, with regards to gaining not-that-much support from the nation’s growing Latino population.
 

Likely to be smashed en masse for 4 years

The outrage felt at Trump who used Latinos as a political punching bag to gain the voter support of white people with ethnic hang-ups wound up not biting him in the culo like was originally thought.

THERE WAS THAT study by Latino Decisions, a Miami-based group that analyzes issues of Latino political empowerment, that estimated Trump could wind up taking as little as 18 percent of the Latino vote. That would have been a record-low, if it had happened.

Instead, it seems that Trump got 29 percent support from the Latino electorate that bothered to cast ballot.

Which means Hillary Clinton, according to the same studies by Edison Research, took 65 percent of Latinos – meaning two of every three people with ethnic origins to a Latin American country gave their support for her.

That is very typical for a Democratic presidential candidate.

JUST AS IS that 29 percent for a Republican. It’s kind of how few Latinos feel the need to be a part of the Party of Reagan. For whatever reason, those individuals don’t want to be identified with the Latino masses, so they wind up siding with political people who verbally express their contempt – and go out of their way to convince themselves that the GOP isn’t really talking about them specifically.

So I really didn’t think it all that significant early Wednesday when I saw on the television broadcasts of Trump’s victory celebration a couple of people waving about signs reading “Hispanics for Trump.” It was bound to happen.

Trump topped Mitt Romney (barely) for Latino votes

Although I have to say I find it interesting that the candidate who kicked off his whole political process more than a year ago by labelling Mexican-Americans as “rapists” and “drug dealers” is somehow more acceptable than the candidate who, four years ago, came up with that “self-deportation” nonsense.

For it’s true. Trump’s 29 percent level of Latino support is better than the 27 percent that Mitt Romney took when he challenged Barack Obama’s re-election.

Hillary couldn't match her esposo for Latino votes

IT’S ALSO BETTER than the 21 percent that Republican Bob Dole took in 1996 when he ran against Bill Clinton’s re-election. Hillary’s husband got what is generally regarded as the record-high Latino support level of 72 percent.

Hillary had been expected to get as high as 79 percent, but wound up falling short. I can’t help but wonder how a stronger turnout would have changed that percentage – because I suspect many people of Latino ethnic origins just didn’t bother to vote.

Although I’m not about to say that Hillary Clinton would have won if she had maximized every single Latino capable of casting a ballot to actually do so. I doubt it would have mattered in North Carolina or changed much in Wisconsin.

It might have made a difference in Florida. Then again, I wonder if only white people had voted in that state if Florida would have rivaled Indiana for the right to say it was the first state to fall into the Trump column on Election Night.

PEOPLE ARE GOING to be spending coming days, weeks and months crunching the numbers (which have yet to be made official in any state) to try to find out where exactly votes could have been changed to affect the outcome. Although I stick by my premise that if every person who had been insulted by Trump had turned out to vote, he would have lost – regardless of the quirks of the Electoral College.

Take my home city of Chicago, where there was roughly a 75 percent voter turnout on Tuesday and where Trump only got 12.5 percent of the vote.

On paper, Clinton took 85 percent of votes cast in the 12^th Ward, overseen by Alderman George Cardenas and is one of the most-heavily Mexican parts of Chicago. Yet the Chicago Reader pointed out that voter turnout in that ward was only 58 percent. I expect to learn that level of turnout was typical across the country; It’s hard to get outraged on behalf of people who couldn’t even bother themselves to vote.

 

Not same vengeance and anger for Latinos

Which makes me wonder if the great beneficiary of the Trump electoral victory is the piñata-making “industry” – since the majority of Latinos disgusted with his win will have to resort to smashing their Trump-shaped containers of candy and other treats with “great vengeance and furious anger” (remember actor Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction?”) to release their tensions over the many inane actions likely to occur during the next four years!

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Can Obama’s “Rahm plea” overcome Wilson’s millions in campaign cycle?

It will be interesting to see how the airwaves war in South and West side Chicago plays out in coming weeks.


Willie Wilson, the one-time McDonalds operator who turned those franchises into a fortune, has made it clear he plans to spend some millions of dollars of his own money to buy airtime on the radio stations appealing to inner-city Chicago – in hopes of being able to achieve the old days where a black mayoral candidate could take 98-99 percent of the African-American vote.

BUT IT SEEMS Mayor Rahm Emanuel is fighting back in his own way to try to get at least a sizable segment of black voters to cast ballots for him – he’s trotting out the president.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported how Emanuel’s campaign will have spots on black-oriented radio featuring Barack Obama, telling us how much better off Chicago will be if we get “four more years” of Rahm as mayor.

Can the one-time Hyde Park neighborhood resident and far South community activist still have enough support amongst black Chicago that enough African-American voters will vote for Emanuel and Wilson won’t have a dominant slice of the overall Chicago electorate? Considering that a recent poll by Lake Research Partners shows Wilson with only 5 percent support overall (with 30 percent still undecided), he has to dominate black voters to avoid electoral embarrassment.

Anything is possible, I suppose. Although a part of me wonders if we’re now going to start hearing the same whispers that initially came up back in 2007 when Obama let it be known he was even interested in running for president – he’s not ‘black’ enough.

WILL WILSON BACKERS – who include the outspoken one-time alderman and state senator Rickey Hendon – be willing to engage in trash talk against Obama; implying that a man with a seventh-grade education like Wilson is more in touch with their lives than is the Harvard Law-educated Obama?

Heck, it was that kind of attitude that caused Obama to suffer the one political loss of his life – getting his behind whupped by still-Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., when Obama had visions of serving in Congress.

I don’t believe the “Obama” name automatically draws support for Emanuel in any significant number – although it could mean that Wilson’s support drops to about three-quarters of the African-American vote (and complete irrelevance in the rest of Chicago).

So I’m waiting to see what the reaction will be, and just how strong a factor race will wind up being in this particular election cycle.

TIMES HAVE CHANGED during the past three decades since the days of Harold Washington fighting for his seat in City Hall. I don’t expect there will be quite the blunt-spoken attacks on either man.

Even in Washington, Obama doesn’t get quite the rhetoric from his GOP enemies that Washington got from Edward R. Vrdolyak during the “Council Wars” days of the mid-1980s!

But how much will it help Obama in his possible return to the Chicago scene if he gets so publicly identified as not being with the people who are determined to “Dump Rahm!!!” at all costs. Although considering that Obama is relying on Emanuel to push through a proposal that will result in the eventual presidential library and museum to be located in Chicago, the two men are already tied together.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of those people who are still peeved that their neighborhood schools got shut down in a cost-cutting measure – although I still think those people would have been better off fighting for improved education opportunities, rather than to keep existing schools that had become quite third-rate!

WILL WILSON HAVE the nerve to take on the president? Or will it be his operatives; some of whom have histories of being willing to engage in trash talk that allegedly respectable people would never say publicly?

I’ll be honest; this election cycle has been quite a dud thus far. Sure some people are upset with the incumbent, but I haven’t really seen anything to indicate any of the challengers are capable of taking that discontent and turning it into political support.

This almost has the feel of an election where people decide not to bother to vote – rather than turn out in force for someone else. In short, Emanuel wins due to political apathy!

And we have to put up with “four more years” of whining and screaming about who’s to blame.

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EXTRA: Treasurer-elect Mike Frerichs

It seems we finally have a new state treasurer. And no, we didn’t have to endure a lengthy legal fight along the lines of the Gore v. Bush battle of 2000.

It was Wednesday morning that Republican nominee Tom Cross decided to concede defeat to Democrat Mike Frerichs in the Nov. 4 elections. Even Illinois Republican Chairman Tim Schneider went along and issued a statement along those lines, although he seemed more interested in praising Cross than admitting GOP defeat.

THEN AGAIN, I don’t think Frerichs – a state senator from Champaign -- cares, so long as the record shows he got more votes than did Cross – a state representative from Oswego and former Illinois House Republican leader.

For the record, it seems that Frerichs got about 9,400 more votes than did Cross – taking barely over 48 percent of the vote to Cross’ just under 48 percent. The remainder of the ballots actually cast went to Libertarian nominee Matthew Skopek.

There are those who are ranting that Chicago and suburban Cook County “stole” the election – mostly from people who truly do not comprehend how small their rural counties are compared to the inner part of the Chicago metropolitan area.

Although for those who were going out of their way during the past two weeks to see daily updates about the vote (as assorted mail-in and provisional ballots continued to be counted) noticed that Frerichs crept into the lead earlier this week and managed to hold it BEFORE the final Chicago/suburb totals were in.

FOR THOSE WHO want to think Chicago rammed a Democrat through as state treasurer against their will, it would seem that what the Chicago-area vote did was bolstered the margin of victory.

Instead of winning by a few hundred votes, Frerichs becomes treasurer-elect by a figure just low-enough that it can’t be rounded off to 10,000.

Which is still a close result for a statewide election in which about 3 million people cast ballots. If anything, it may be some of those outer counties that kept Cross from the office that way too many political observers wanted to believe he was going to win.

Frerichs actually won Will County with 58.5 percent of the vote, and also took north suburban Lake County. And his suburban Cook percent was only 53.67 percent.

WHICH COULD WELL be why Cross chose not to get involved in any kind of demand for a recount – which is not something Illinois law allows for on an automatic basis.

He saves himself significant legal expenses, leaves open the option of a political future (by not being a sore loser), and only manages to offend the hard-core Republican partisans who can’t get over the fact that having a gubernatorial nominee who took 101 of 102 counties does NOT mean a political wipeout of the opposition.

As for those who are going to rant about “stolen” elections, I don’t think the rest of us should be too concerned. Those people were going to be offended no matter what happened – and they’ll probably revert back to ranting about Kennedy/Nixon of 1960 before long.

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