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Chicago Sun‐Times – July 22, 1999
Author: Raymond R. Coffey
For the November 1998 elections, there were 68 voters registered from the Bachelor Hotel at
1134 W. Wilson in Chicago's 46th Ward, Precinct 35, in Uptown.
By last April, for Ald. Helen Shiller’s run‐off race for re‐election, the number of voters
registered from the Bachelor had jumped to 83, according to official poll sheets.
The single‐room‐occupancy hotel – owned by Mike Siegel, who is a Shiller ally and proprietor
of a trouble‐spot neighborhood saloon on the same block – has a legal maximum capacity of
50.
Poll sheets for the April election, won by Shiller , also show voters registered at a currency
exchange and a restaurant owned by Siegel, who also operates a day‐labor service in the same
block.
When neighborhood residents campaigned in 1996 to vote their precinct dry to eliminate the
public drunkenness associated with Siegel's Wooden Nickel saloon, Shiller allies, including
Marc Kaplan, solicited people to withdraw their signatures from the "dry" petition.
An election judge told me that an employee of the Wooden Nickel showed up at the Precinct
35 polling place last April and said he had been ordered to vote for Shiller , but didn't want to.
He left without voting – but then returned and did so under orders because, the judge said, he
hadn't been able to show the people who sent him a ballot stub.
The allegations of vote fraud in last April's election cited here, and more, are contained in an
80‐page report compiled by election judges, poll watchers and precinct captains in the 46th
Ward and aimed at Shiller’s political organization.
It has been presented to the U.S. attorney's office, Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine,
state and local election boards and Mayor Daley. None of them seem, so far, to have taken
interest in the report and the evidence of serious violations of election law .
That evidence includes, for instance, copies of two registration documents for one Charles
Tipton with two different addresses and two glaringly different signatures. The poll sheets also
show nearly 200 people registered to vote in two – sometimes three – different precincts.
Sloppiness on the part of the Board of Elections in checking and cleaning up the registration
lists might account for some of this, but having some 200 people put in position to cast 400 or
500 votes obviously threatens ballot box integrity.
A temporary Salvation Army shelter that had 60 beds and was to be closed in April, the same
month as the election, had 130 registered voters.
There were 22 voters registered from a non‐residential health care facility at 810 W. Montrose.
The Rev. John Smith, whose Maryville social service organization operates the facility, told
election watchers none of the registrants were residents.
The Shiller campaign requested and obtained 1,000 absentee ballots for the April runoff – a
large increase from the first round election – and the number of absentee votes cast increased
significantly.
Two voters registered at 4711 N. Magnolia in Precinct 35 came in and were allowed to vote,
though the building they allegedly lived in had been vacant for weeks and was demolished the
week before the election. They were also simultaneously registered in Precinct 32.
In Precinct 12, the report alleges that, as one election judge put it, Board of Elections officials
"forced us to include absentee ballots from nursing home residents" in the vote count, though
the ballot signatures were obviously not the signatures of the voters.
People also were registered from 4512 N. Sheridan, which is a non‐residential United Way
office. It also is known as "St. Augustin Shelter," but there is no shelter there. At least nine
voters cast ballots before judges realized what was going on and began challenging the
address.