Poll watchers accused of steering voters in Illinois

There is a primary election Tuesday in Illinois, and this year the state is experimenting with early voting.

In Cook County, where Chicago is, you may have heard there is a tradition of crooked elections. So there should be no surprise that for some people, early voting means earlier opportunities to commit vote fraud.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Cook County officials said Saturday that two poll watchers at nursing homes in the south suburbs allegedly tried to steer elderly residents into voting for certain candidates and threatened an election judge who tried to stop them.

Cook County Clerk David Orr said two poll watchers working for Robert Shaw allegedly urged elderly residents of a Burnham nursing home to vote for Shaw, a candidate for the Illinois general assembly running in Tuesday's Democratic primary, and for Cook County Board President John Stroger. Poll watchers are not allowed to interfere with the voting process or campaign at polling sites, officials said.

One of the poll watchers allegedly threatened an election judge after being told to stop passing out literature urging the residents to punch certain numbers on the ballot, Orr said.

Mining votes from the elderly is a traditional sleazy tactic of Cook County Democrats.

Shameful.

But at least the Sun-Times carried the story. It belongs on the front page of the paper, not in the back pages.

Sadly, voting shenanigans in Illinois and Cook County are so commonplace, such occurrences are not major news stories.