My fraudulent voting adventure

There’s going to be a major news story soon about fraudulent voting in Chicago and it's all my fault. That was my vote that’s about to cause all the trouble and I cannot tell you how sorry I am for the whole thing.
 
For what it’s worth, I blame the system. I was going to do this the easy way, with a mail-in ballot. Yeah, I read about that lazy bum of a postal worker in New Jersey who tossed nearly 2,000 pieces of mail, including 99 ballots, into the trash. And I know about that now-departed election worker in Pennsylvania who threw away nine ballots because, well, just because.
 
That wasn’t enough to deter me, though. We know about these cases because the lost ballots were found and the votes will be counted. So the system seems to be working, at least as far as finding and correcting mistakes is concerned.
 
I cannot vote by mail, however, because I would need to sign the envelope and my signature would be checked against the one on file from 1972. Absolutely nobody would compare my flowing script from youth with the flat-lined EKG that creaks from my arthritic hand today and say, “Yep, same guy.” Any mail-in ballot from me is guaranteed to be rejected.
 
So my only choice was to vote in person, and that’s where the fraud occurred.
 
I stopped in at the Voting Super Center on Clark and Lake, filled out the form, and took my ballot to the machine. I was ready this time. Most elections, I punt on the judicial ballot and guess at the advisory votes. This year, though, I researched everything and voted like I was making a how-to video for the Board of Elections.  
 
After checking my ballot about six times, I went up to the Official Pointing Person to find out where to take it. True to his mission, he didn’t say anything, but he did point to a machine about 20 feet away, so I walked over and checked it out.
 
The screen said to insert my ballot, which I did, and then a woman came running over.
 
“You can’t do that,” she yelled.
 
“I can’t do what?”
 
“You can’t put that in there.”
 
“But it said to insert it here.”
 
“You’re not allowed to do that.”
 
Etcetera.
 
Because, as it turns out, I was not supposed to insert my ballot into the machine with the LCD display that said “Insert ballot.” Nope. I was supposed to wait for an election judge to come by and initial the ballot and then handle the insertion for me. In fairness, it was a small screen, but maybe they could have had it say, “Wait for election judge,” instead of “Insert ballot.”
 
The agitated woman, who might or might not have been an election judge herself, insisted that my vote would not count, because the ballot did not have the requisite initials. I had submitted an illegal ballot and now the entire election is rigged.
 
I explained that the official pointer had pointed me to the machine and he didn’t say I needed to wait for anyone. To no avail, of course, because I had just screwed up what is supposed to be the most important election of our lifetimes.
 
I cannot believe I am the only one to make this mistake, which means there’s a major scandal brewing here. Someone’s going to find out about the ballots that somehow got into the machines in Chicago without a judge’s initials. (Well, you just found out because I told you.)

And when people find out about it, nobody is going to say, “I guess there was some go-getter, take-charge, rugged individual who simply got the job done without waiting for some government bureaucrat to tell him it was okay.”
 
Nope. They’re going to say, “It’s Chicago. Vote early and often. Fraud. Fraud. Fraud.”
 
And it’s all my fault. I am so, so sorry. I promise that I will get it right when I go back to vote again next week.
 
JK. Of course I’m not going to vote again next week. Or am I? The only way to find out is by subscribing to our weekly posts by clicking here.

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