Republicans intimidate dead voters:
CNS/IowaHawk's Twisted News
11/3/98 David Burge, the IowaHawk
DEMS BATTLE BACK WITH GET-OUT-THE-DEAD VOTE PUSH
David Burge, the IowaHawk
Chicago (APUPI): Leaving nothing to chance, Chicago area Democratic party precinct captains were out in full force early Tuesday morning, canvassing Cook County cemeteries, morgues and mausoleums in a concerted voter turnout effort.
The dead have always been a critical factor in Chicago political calculus, and this year appears to be no exception. A tight U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Carol Mosley-Braun and Republican challenger Peter Fitzgerald seems, in fact, to have increased the importance of the deceased vote.
In a campaign appearance last week, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a native of nearby Park Ridge, warned Chicago area dead voters that “Carol Mosley-Braun's opponent is no friend of Stationary Americans. His public opposition to the Federal Casket Standards Act of 1997 shows he is too extreme for the dead, and too extreme for Illinois.”
A series of Democratic radio ads run over the weekend amplified Mrs. Clinton's appeal to the Interred. In the ads, an announcer warns “When you don't vote, the Republicans turn another cemetery into a toxic landfill. When you don't vote another mausoleum becomes a Republican handball court. Another urn becomes a Republican's ashtray. When you don't vote, your saying it's alright if another Republican runs a power mower over your plot at 3 AM and steals your flowers. The Republicans hate you so much, they'd kill you if you weren't already dead.”
“Don't take this lying down,” the commercial concludes, “vote Democratic on November 3.”
The last-minute appeal seems to have energized the Demised, as Cook County voter registration Monday exceeded 7 million – an impressive 237% of the adult population. Frank Blajzlotivic, Democratic precinct captain for the 17th ward, credits the Democrats' informational campaign.
“Everybody says the dead are lethargic and apathetic,” notes Blajzlotivic, “but when it comes to bread and butter post mortem issues, they really get out to vote, and vote, and vote, and vote, and vote for Democrats, especially in close elections.”
The data seem to support Blajzlotivic. Dead Chicagoans have regularly been the decisive edge in House and Senate races. For example, exit polling shows that in 1996 Democratic candidates picked up 99.998% of the local dead vote, a level of loyalty exceeded only by the criminally insane. One stalwart local Democrat, blacksmith Hans Schlagel, has cast over 9,000 presidential votes since his death in 1874.
Republicans have for years tried to make inroads with dead voters, as part of a ‘big tent' strategy. The GOP had hoped to capitalize politically when President Clinton and the Democrats passed a retroactive inheritance tax increase on the dead as part of the 1994 budget. However, not even a massive tax increase has shaken the Democrats' hold on Decomposing Americans.
Republicans further alienated the dead when it was revealed that they were planning to place camera-toting ‘poll watchers' in cemetery-heavy precincts, ostensibly to cut down on voter fraud. DNC Chairman Steven Grossman decried the Republican plan as “an obvious attempt to intimidate Dead Americans. They will not stand still for this.”
Grossman does not apologize for using ‘scare tactics' with departed voters. “They're scared, and they ought to be,” he says. “Republicans would end the jobs-for-the-dead program that Papa Joe Kennedy and Richard Daley started in 1960.”
The Democrats' appeal to dead Chicagoans is part of a nationwide, targeted get-out-the-vote campaign, according to political analyst Stuart Rothenberg. “In the Northeast, and Midwest, the party is focusing on its traditional core of labor unions and dead voters,” explains Rothenberg, “while in the Sunbelt, where there are fewer dead, the party has targeted emerging voting blocs such as pets, automobiles and post office box numbers.”
Despite the encouraging voter registration trends in Chicago, local Democrats were leaving little to chance.
At 9 PM Monday night, P.A.-equipped city sanitation trucks were patrolling Southside neighborhoods, exhorting local residents to “bring out your dead!”
The noisy requests elicited the names and locations of thousands of recently deceased Chicagoans, who will provide a perpetual electoral legacy to grateful Democrats.
By 3 AM Tuesday morning, inmates of the Cook County Jail were busily digging in local graveyards, loading vans with the remains of departed voters for pre-dawn trips to local voting booths. It's dirty work, says inmate Mike Kovach, but rewarding.
“Dese poor people ain't got no udder way ta get to da polls ta exercise dere right ta vote,” says the stocky, ponytailed Kovach, who awaits trial for grand larceny. He pauses to wipe the sweat from his brow after tossing another spadeful of dirt.
“Plus I get five bucks for every stiff I load in da van,” he adds, finally hitting the lid of a pauper's coffin. Democratic officials prefer fresh paupers' graves as they are only three feet deep.
“And cushy toll booth jobs if we make quota,” notes fellow inmate Jabari Sanders, helping Kovach pry the lid off their quarry.
Precinct captain Frank Blajzlotivic says the night has been a masterpiece of logistics.
“Anybody who says Democrats ain't organized, ain't seen us,” he says, with an obviously tone of pride. “We got vans taking prisoners to cemeteries and morgues, we got vans taking cadavers to voting booths, then there's the re-interment, cremation urn cleanup, slab replacement, getting the money from the unions and paying off the campaign workers, all before 9 PM tomorrow.”
“In Chicago,” notes Blajzlotivic, “we know how to make the trains run on time.”
Copyright 1998, David Burge, the IowaHawk.
Email IowaHawk_98@yahoo.com
Visit him at www.conservativenews.org and www.freerepublic.com
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