Geoff over at Chi-Town Daily News has a reporter following very closely, the Fraud Trial of Joe Moore. We're going to find out in the coming months what type of election judges the 49th ward democratic party had at the table of the 49th ward voting areas.
David Fagus the 49th ward Democratic committeeman, who runs this corrupt organization, should be called to testify who he puts at each precinct and how much they're paid. Also what directions they were given. This is Joe Moore's main lap dog. Wayne Frazier, and Ann Sullivan's name should surface soon. Was there any vote buying going on at the senior homes? Any strong arm tactics used?
BLOGNOTES: David Fagus is up for re-election - and his very close ties to Todd Stroger and all his problems, are directly part of David Fagus and his problems in this ward too. David Fagus forced Todd Stroger on the 49th ward voters, even though the voters of the 49th ward felt Forrest Claypool was the logical choice when Fagus and Stroger lied to us. Should be an interesting summer and fall as David and Joe campaign together while Joe is under investigation for voter fraud.
48 comments:
Huh? That's all he's got? Now I see why you didn't quote from the story Craig. So I will:
"Among the complaints received by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and provided to the Daily News under the state Freedom of Information Act were these:
**Poll watcher Jim Barnes complained about people wearing campaign buttons within the campaign free zone.
**Sherine Madigan complained that the 9th precinct didn't have enough judges when it opened.
**An anonymous complaintant reported that election officials in the 24th Precinct allowed someone who didn't live there to vote. The person was also allowed to vote in another precinct, the complaint said."
And the reporter adds this note:
"Though Gordon's campaign has been awaiting a review of the complaints, few appear to bolster the fraud allegations made in his lawsuit."
Really, please, just give it up Don.
To RP Neigboor, The fight has just begun. And remember, Fagus, that Stroger flunky, is next on our list. Start raising and spending, you boys will need it.
Dear Friends,
As most of you know, Judge Hayes ruled in our favor on June 22nd by denying
the Board of Elections and Alderman Moore (the plaintiffs) their Motions to
Dismiss. We are now ready to mount the investigation (Discovery) next week
of the April 17th run-off election. However, we're in need of a great deal
of funding in order to continue to pay the legal fees associated with this
effort. So I'm asking all of you who have supported my campaign in the past
so generously to help us once again.
I have attached a letter explaining what we need and how you can help.
Please take a few moments to read it and if you have any problem opening the
PDF format let me know and I'll send you a text version in an email. You
might also note that we just celebrated our country's birthday a couple days
ago. I think it's appropriate that we're challenging the election and the
process that has had so many problems over the years at a time when we honor
our nation's birth.
One of the most eloquent and certainly one of the most dynamic leaders
during our revolutionary period was Thomas Paine. This is the second 4th of
July that I've made it a point to go back and re-read "Common Sense". It
looks like it's going to be a tradition for me, since I believe no written
document expresses so pointedly the times and events. So let me leave you
with his opening paragraph, which is so appropriate for what we are
attempting to accomplish today...
"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet
sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not
thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right,
and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the
tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason." (Paine's
italics, not mine)
Sincerely,
Don Gordon
p.s., Don't forget, we're not forgetting about the ward issues you guys are neglecting. Such as the below posts. You guys got your hands full.
Joe Moore commits multiple illegal elections acts.
Been There said...> "i was a judge. my husband was a judge. we were paid. we were instructed to not let the gordon pollwatchers get away with disenfranchising voters. period.
Unless you want to give your name, we're not running most of this cocka-mammy story you posted.
If you were a judge, you should be proud to say you were.
What's your full name and what exact precinct did you and your husband work?
Did you vote for Joe Moore?
Who gave you the marching orders to watch out for Don Gordon poll-watchers?
We'll have more questions, as I've archived your post and ip address for evidence.
Who in the Moore Campaign was responsible to tipping off the judges to watch out for Don Gordon poll-watchers only?
So, you're close with Joe. You sound very bias in Joe Moore's favor for a election judge. I would expect the Gordon legal challenge to be looking to talk to you and your husband.
it is perfectly legal to have a candidate affiliation, and be a judge. in fact, it is expected. the campaigns find and assign judges. that is how it works. that is why judges are evenly split between the parties. i worked beside a staunch gordon supporter.
"close with joe" would be a ludicrous thing to say. i am a supporter. the only thing he ever did for me was to call for the impeachment of george bush on the city council floor. and preside of 16 years of steady growth and improvement for rogers park.
and i think posting half a conversation is fucked up.
and i have already volunteered to testify.
Good, tell the truth. Don't lie like Joe Moore does.
been there said...preside of 16 years of steady growth and improvement for rogers park.
If this is true, why is it that other neighborhoods [Uptown, Edgewater, Ukie Village, Little Italy, South Loop...and so on...] have improved VASTLY in the past few years (I've seen the changes and I've only lived in Chicago for 7 years, RP for 6), while RP is STILL eeking along [no significant improvement in the retail base, Loyola Park is getting worse in condition and in number of homeless living there, drug and gangs are still a problem, etc].
Let's be specific Been There...exactly WHAT steady growth and improvements HAS Joe presided over? (don't mention stuff in the works like the Gale FH or the fire house as they are not completed)
the state of rogers park is not something i choose to fight about on this board. i do not have time. election integrity is another matter altogether.
It is true. Joe Moore has presided over 16 years of growth. A paperweight would have watched over 16 years of growth in Chicago. The question is, what did Moore do to try to make our ward grow at a faster rate than the other wards?
Been there is a political hack that has only one interest. Keeping gangs, drugs and guns thriving in Rogers Park. Thank you.
from been there, "...not let the gordon pollwatchers get away with disenfranchising voters. period."
say what? Oh, yes that was our plan. right. But they stopped us didn't they? Not!
Actually, the plan was to guard against the dirty tricks that Joe Moore is known for. He calls them business as usual.
Been there- You seem to have some integrity. what do you think about Joe shaking hands with seniors inside the polling place? Don't you think that is improper?
Been There, tell us about Joe Moore's integrity when he's cheating on his girlfriend.
been there said... the state of rogers park is not something i choose to fight about on this board.
Because you will lose that fight.
election integrity is a complicated thing. i have spent a lot of time following it, since 2000 when they couldn't seem to count the votes in florida. for those of you who forget, al gore got more votes, according to a consortium of newspapers, using a variety of interpretations of what constitutes voter intent, and recounting several combinations of counties, including a full recount of the state. they were unable to count the 80,000, mostly poor, mostly black, solidly democratic voters who were identified as felons on a list which was created pretty much out of whole cloth, and were refused the right to vote. hava gives such challenged voters a provisional, or placebo ballot which are a devise made to make these people think that their votes would be counted, when they would be thrown in the trash. only about 25% of provisional votes are counted. would you be happy with a one in four chance that your vote would be counted?
do you know what the u.s. attorney scandal is about? it is about using phony examples of "voter fraud" a single voter casting more than one vote, to distract attention from "vote fraud" or "election fraud", where insiders manipulate vote counting. by crying "voter fraud", they can disenfranchise voters, by challenging their vote, by making them show photo id, making them vote a provisional ballot. the attorneys that were fired refused to file charges in the trumped up, flimsy cases of "vote fraud" that they were being pressured to pursue. and they refused to ignore obvious cases of republican "election fraud"
a company called choice point supplied the "felons" list in florida. a religious nut job supplied the list for the gordon people. maybe you don't know what a caging list is, but gordon's pollwatchers had one. they had red sheets, provided by the freeman institute, with the names of voters to challenge. in my precinct, it was approx 50 names long. about a dozen actually came in to vote. most of the challenged voters were able to produce valid id, were not challenged on the canvass, so they were allowed to vote. if race was a factor in targeting these voter, which it could be, this is a felony under the voting rights act.
don had his bite at the apple. his people challenged voters all day. they were allowed to vote because the record showed them eligible to vote. an officer of the court heard their challenge, and dismissed it. in some precincts, gordon's people were on the phone to the board of elections half the day.
so, this could be someone trolling for a case of voter fraud. what better place than chicago to find a dem to charge with "election fraud". especially one that told both george bush and walmart to get screwed. spare me the tinfoil hat comments, please. you can look this shit up. it's all true.
these tactics are far more despicable than shaking an old ladies hand.
Ha ha ha
While Don Gordon's trumped up case pretends otherwise, the election for Alderman was not decided because of election judges. Both sides, not one, appeared to have supporters in the Judge seats and while nobody can actively support a candidate in the polling place, it is not unusual for an election judge to support a candidate outside of the polling place.
Their arguement may make Gordon supporters feel better because that makes the loss someone's elses fault, but it comes back to this: a slightly larger portion of the ward voted for Joe Moore.
Between intimidation of voters by the Gordon crew and Gordon families encouraging kids to come back to home to vote who moved away years ago the real margin was more like 500 votes more for Moore. There is no doubt that Gordon benefited from supporters who broke the law. Fortunately this is election law violations and not a murder trial.
As has been the case already, each month more of the case and the claims behind it are falling away. It will be over soon.
Why are you laughing, Toto?
Total lies. Who's investigating Joe for voter fraud? States Attorney, Attorney General, Independent Prosecuter? Is there a grand jury investigation going on.
No to all. Its all so silly.
We'll be dancing around again. I am particularlry glad the Gordon/Freeman Institute tactics didn't work this time. I was working for the campaign of another Living Wage candidate, Cynthia Soto, and the vote supression tactics were blatant and successful. They used canvass lists, but in that instance the majority of pollwatchers and judges were in the pocket of the incumbant, Jesse Granato. All they had to do was find ten Soto supporters in each precinct to prevent from voting to win the election. They'd say they had canvassed the address and the tennant moved, or the building was vacant, people would even walk home and get a piece of mail, but they had to wait for a State's Attorney to show up if the judges "believed" the allegations that they had moved from the address, even with proof, you have to wait for a State's Attorney if the judge says so! Can you believe that? There's not enough State's Attorneys even if they were hustling to help voters who are being challenged. People have to work or the polls close and that's it. Granato won by 360 votes, just seven votes per precinct. It was obvious what happened, but true champions with real causes don't cry and whine, politics is a tactical game as much as anything else...It will never be perfect and there will always be tricks you can play with the system, you learn and move on. We moved on to better things and got Soto elected as a State Rep and beat Jesse in the next round. Two victories out of one defeat. Quit crying. You don't even have a cause!
""tell us about Joe Moore's integrity when he's cheating on his girlfriend.""
Can't you just have a debate? Do you have to throw in garbage everytime someone makes a point, you don't agree with? These personal attacks are so Bill O'Reilly
Question - with only one month remaining before candidates running in the February 5 Primary Elections can begin circulating nominating petitions, has anyone indicated their intention to run against Fagus for 49th Ward Democratic Committeeman?
committeemen are not elected that way. although they are on the primary ballot, it is not a public office, it is a party office. candidates are chosen by precinct captains and party officials.
Been there said....> "candidates are chosen by precinct captains and party officials."
That how you zombies under the Moore regime blindly do it. That's how we got stuck with Stroger as county board president.
Anyone else who wants to run against that hack Fagus can get signatures signed on a petition to challenge this 49th ward Stroger puppet.
been there, This is where I start to think Jomo supporters are certifiably "cuckcoo." You make it out like Don is part of a machiavellian-type conspiracy and Joe is a shining beacon of Democratic goodness. You brush off his throwing around his incumbant weight by trolling the nursing homes and his people outside the polling place playing the race card BIG time. I was there and I witnessed it all day. An African Amerian young man slapping all the people of color on the back saying, "This is your man, brother. He's got your back. You need to vote for this guy." How could I (as a white woman) compete with that? There was a hidden message in his remarks and it was: This is the guy you should vote for as a person of color. And it does kind of smack a bit of conspiracy in a way.
The whole point here is that incumbants have a ridiculous and unfair advantage. On election day, watching Joe in and out my polling place practically hugging the judges (there was no Gordon judge there and incidentally Gordon judges were in short supply), it felt like a "shoe-in" for Joe. That itself is offensive.
At my polling place, the same young guy was storing his palm cards INSIDE the polling place behind the cabinet. He treated the polling place like his second home-INAPPROPRIATE. And I called and the BOE put a stop to that. Of course, I'm sure that is another one of those minor things like illegal electioneering inside a polling place and bothering to use correct punctuation that you don't deem necessary?
I worked on the Gordon campaign and was told those lists came from canvased addresses where the residents were no longer there or the buildings were vacant.
I know Don as a person of integrity not a player of dirty tricks. All I ever heard working on the campaign was "no dirty tricks." You say a religious "freak" (not very pc of you btw) made the red lists. Prove it. I think you are lying.
Just wait till Joe gets his new job and then Mayor Daley gets to appoint someone to be Alderman. Don't come crying when that happens.
sincerely, i think don gordon is probably a decent guy, but his campaign was influenced by others, for their own purposes. most of the gordon supporters i met were the same. decent people who did not really recognize the backstory and bigger implications of what was said and done.
was it part of the vast right wing conspiracy? i don't know. but between the penn and teller hatchet job, and the freeman institute help, it just smells like elephant poop to me. it has happened just the same way in many places.
how do i know freeman made the list? a folder was left behind in a polling place. i saw it with my own 2 eyes. prepared by the freeman institute. you know it too, if you worked for gordon.
go check the congressional record, read the testimony of david iglasius of new mexico. read the testimony of carol lam.
there is a lot more to the political landscape than rogers park. do you not think that the country's third largest city, a bastion of democratic power, is not noticed by the most virulently partisan administration to ever hold the white house? when an alderman stands on the council floor, and decries a stupid war, and calls for impeachment, at a time when most were afraid to say the word, do you think no one notices? knowing what i know, i don't think so.
and as far as running for fagus' job- it is not a public office. it is a party office. it does not have the same nominating procedure. if you want to try to take his job, go ahead and try. but i am telling you. the party is allowed to slate their own candidates. it is a PARTY office.
I think we all share some similar values. It's just that some of us want to see our local politician be just that- local. That doesn't mean they can't take a stand against the war or propose a wage ordinance. It means that the primary focus is improving the quality of life in the ward. That could be revolutionary and inspiring just as much as so called "bigger" causes.
I think those who support Joe are puffed up by his standing up on these bigger issues, but those of us who do not support Joe would just like him to do his job. And we don't think spending months in Washington working for the DNC is relevant. I can see how one can make an argument that is is relevant though- as we all suffer from the existing administration and perhaps the Democratic party needs as much help as it can get (I would not argue with that), but there are other ways to enact change. Those of us who didn't voe for Joe wanted to see them tried.
As far as the list from Freeman- I am aware they provided the list. But they said it came from our canvasing. Freeman told me their specialty was helping underdogs run against incumbents. What do you know about this group that I do not? I tried googlng them a while ago but came up empty. nd from what I understand, Joe has hired some icky people himself (Andrew Stark comes to mind).
the precinct i worked was described by the gordon judge, who lived in the precinct, as "written off". so where did they get such a long challenge list?
when i hear people say they want their alderman to "focus on our ward" i hear a spoiled baby crying "me, me, me". everything i heard out of the gordon campaign was an appeal to selfishness and fear. like saying "they are going to run lakeshore drive through our beaches." pure bullshit.
the democratic party needs to reach all the way to the roots to work. no roots? the beltway sellouts have free reign.
and i have no idea who andrew stark is. but i do know that all campaigns take people who walk in the door, and put them to work. some are sleazy, some are stupid, some are moles, some are just trying to suck up some power. that is the way it is. most campaign workers are not "hired" or paid.
Beenthere wrote: "when i hear people say they want their alderman to "focus on our ward" i hear a spoiled baby crying "me, me, me"."
Sorry ... refresh me on this one, isn't the alderman SUPPOSED to be a representative of his/her ward? Why is it selfish to ask someone to do their job?
As for the accusations that were flying about during the election (LSD extensions, race baiting, affordable housing questions), it seems like the fear-mongering came as much from Moore's camp as from anywhere. If you're going to accuse politicians of inciting people's selfishness, you should at least own up to the fact that "your side" was doing it too.
as a member of "moore's camp" i have no idea what you are talking about.
been there said... "as a member of "moore's camp" i have no idea what you are talking about."
That's par for the course. As I say, Joe Moore supporters are puppets who only know to follow. That's why I started this blog in the first place.
One day Joe's going to walk all you idiots off a cliff.
If that is all you hear ("me me me"), then I don't think you are listening. It's not me, of course, it's we. But there is really no point in arguing because we will never agree.
I believe at this point, the most powerful changes will have to start local in communities and with individuals getting together in groups NOT in Washington. We all need to get a backbone and demand better.
I just saw Michael Moore's new film tonight and that is what I got out of it.
While you see our Alderman proposing fairly ineffective ordinances and working with the DFA as reaching some goal- I would like to see change on a more local level. And that is not just for me, but for everyone who lives here.
Ha ha ha ha!
jocelyn,
i would like more real info on the freeman institute myself. what is out there it is very spotty, indeed. for instance, why is there no mention on election support on their website? or anywhere else that i can find? if they are a 501c3, they are forbidden from political activity.
i found this listing on amazon- reviews of joel freeman's book-
Return to Glory: The Powerful Stirring of the Black Man
http://www.amazon.com/Return-Glory-Powerful-Stirring-Black/dp/096256057X
(not sure how to get a link here, but you can cut and pate the title at amazon.com)
he sounds like the kind of religious nut that has permeated most of our government of late. twisting facts and history to fit their view of what god wants. just what the founder fathers warned us against.
why would this organization, from maryland, get involved in a chicago aldermanic race, and where else have they worked? were they involved in don's decision to run in the first place?
is this what you want in the 49th ward?
You clueless wonders getting your panties in a bunch over the Freeman Institute is laughable.
I found there organization to be little help at all. This so-called caging list you guys speak so often of - was information gathered by residents like myself, who photo documented vacant and boarded up buildings in the 49th ward.
Buildings that have been vacant for months, if not years. That and stealth condos that haven't been sold, etc.
It had nothing to do with returned mailers.
Been there, you've been seriously brain-washed by my little buddy Alex Armour - and that's all there is to say about that.
Yes, Been There, I found that bizarro Freeman Institute in a google search and immediately knew that it was NOT the same one. I mean come on. As I said, cuckcoo! Get real!
the gordon judge in my precinct told me that the precinct had been "written off"- no one canvassed it. i hope that the basis for these lists is among the things that will come out if this sorry challenge ever gets a hearing.
the part of this you do not get is that this is happening all over the country, just like they did it here. they who? they the rnc.
if alex says the same things i do, good for him. he pays attention to what is happening. i have had a handful of conversations with alex, and judging from them, i have followed the issues of election fraud far closer than he has.
well, i would be happy to have more info on who the freeman institute is.
Been There, stop living in the past. It's over, move on.
craig,
you guys are the one challenging the election.
no sign of freeman institute in my search of gordon committee campaign filings with sbe. things that make you go hmmmmm....
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