Right now, there are tens of thousands of servicemembers fighting overseas to defend our rights and freedoms. One of America’s most cherished rights is the right to vote. There was a very loud outcry when New York officials somehow missed the deadline to send out military ballots. Well, first it was New York, and now it’s Illinois. And Illinois has miraculously managed to be even more outrageous than New York. While 35 counties failed to mail the military ballots in time, election officials made sure that inmates get the chance to vote by hand delivering ballots to prisons. So those are the priorities in Illinois, huh? The men and women who are putting their lives on the line for us aren’t important enough to get ballots sent to on time, but criminals get theirs hand delivered.
Over 35 counties in Illinois missed the deadline to mail military ballots to our soldiers defending America. But in Chicago, county election officials have taken special steps to ensure that no inmates at the Cook County Jail are unable to cast a ballot.
The Chicago Board of Elections hand delivers ballots to the jail. They don’t even wait for the inmates to apply – they bring the applications with the ballots! Over 2,600 inmates have cast ballots so far – strikingly similiar to the 2,600 soldiers who will likely not recieve a ballot for the Nov 2 election.
It’s bad enough that we have several states letting something as simple as mailing military ballots get screwed up. But Illinois takes shameful to a whole new level. About 2,900 ballots were not sent out, yet election officials still have no formal plan to ensure military votes are counted.
But hey, don’t worry — they’ve got the prisoners covered!
Strangely enough, could the fact that New York and Illinois are both overwhelmingly Democratic states have factored in to this whole military ballot controversy? Military votes, after all, tend to swing Republican. In a corrupt state like Illinois, I wouldn’t put it past them.
Curiously (or maybe not so curiously), this is the city and state that Obama calls home. But where’s the outrage from the Commander-in-Chief? Is he making statements on cable television wanting to know “whose ass to kick” to get this issue resolved? You’d think he wouldn’t stand for this, but apparently he’s too busy smearing the Chamber of Commerce and planning his post-election vacation to care about fighting for the rights of the servicemembers who put their lives on the line to defends ours.
Jewels says: This is outrageous. Did they think that we’re so stupid, we wouldn’t notice what was going on in Obama’s home state? (and is anyone surprised that Obama came from this cesspool of mafia style politics?)
I have friends and family living in Illinois and we’ve long wondered if the Democrats’ control over the state is not completely because of the under-handed, illegal and back stabbing politics that are just business as usual in IL. You can’t tell me that the Daley clan has been in office all these years because they played fair.
We’ve often wondered what elections would look like if the state were forced to shoot straight, count all of the legal ballots and punish people with fines and jail time if they try to pass off forged or ineligible ballots. Not to mention the way they set up their nomination process… but that’s a whole other comment.
John F says: There is nothing to see here Citizen, move along.
Thought that only Vermont and Maine permitted prisoners that are incarcerated to vote. So why is IL allowing this all of a sudden….Obama change the law in his favor?
Tell him to join the PGA come 2012 as he practices so often!
Adolph says: I must admit, it leaves me at a loss to describe this complete
loss of compentency! Some 34 counties in the state of Illinois
forgot there were people serving abroad? Perhaps the election is
not high-profile enough to have it placed on the calendar as an “action items.” Or perhaps since midterm elections come only once every two years, it was overlooked. I guess a lot of people just didn’t know there was an election in Nov 2, as no one is really talking about it.
But, how thoughtful and duty-driven it was that ballots were delivered to incarcerated people.
“Hey you in the uniform, go over there and do what needs to be done;
we’ll take care of things while you are gone. Don’t you worry!!”
From 14 year Navy vet with a son now serving
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