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    Cat's Out of The Bag in Uptown (081799)

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    UptownUpdate
    Wright registered her three cats, Emily, Pippi and Koko, to receive voter registration cards in Chicago in order to test vulnerabilities in the voter registration system. When the cats received registration cards with no verification of their identities, Wright argued this showed the system was too open to fraud. A spokesman for the Board of Elections dismissed the cat registrations as a "cheap trick" and said safeguards like verifying signatures make prosecution a deterrent to voter fraud. Further canvassing by an activist in Chicago precincts found hundreds of voters no longer lived at the addresses registered.

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    Cat's Out of The Bag in Uptown (081799)

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    UptownUpdate
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    Wright registered her three cats, Emily, Pippi and Koko, to receive voter registration cards in Chicago in order to test vulnerabilities in the voter registration system. When the cats received registration cards with no verification of their identities, Wright argued this showed the system was too open to fraud. A spokesman for the Board of Elections dismissed the cat registrations as a "cheap trick" and said safeguards like verifying signatures make prosecution a deterrent to voter fraud. Further canvassing by an activist in Chicago precincts found hundreds of voters no longer lived at the addresses registered.

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    Cat's Out of the Bag in Uptown (081799)

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    Wright registered her three cats, Emily, Pippi and Koko, to receive voter registration cards in Chicago in order to test vulnerabilities in the voter registration system. When the cats received registration cards with no verification of their identities, Wright argued this showed the system was too open to fraud. A spokesman for the Board of Elections dismissed the cat registrations as a "cheap trick" and said safeguards like verifying signatures make prosecution a deterrent to voter fraud. Further canvassing by an activist in Chicago precincts found hundreds of voters no longer lived at the addresses registered.

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    17 views2 pages

    Cat's Out of The Bag in Uptown (081799)

    Uploaded by

    UptownUpdate
    Wright registered her three cats, Emily, Pippi and Koko, to receive voter registration cards in Chicago in order to test vulnerabilities in the voter registration system. When the cats received registration cards with no verification of their identities, Wright argued this showed the system was too open to fraud. A spokesman for the Board of Elections dismissed the cat registrations as a "cheap trick" and said safeguards like verifying signatures make prosecution a deterrent to voter fraud. Further canvassing by an activist in Chicago precincts found hundreds of voters no longer lived at the addresses registered.

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    Cat's out of the bag in Uptown 

    Chicago Sun‐Times – August 17, 1999  
    Author: Raymond R. Coffey 
     
    Emily  C.  Wright,  Pippi  L.  Wright  and  Koko  Z.  Wright  all  received  in  the  mail  last  week  voter 
    registration cards in Precinct 26 of the 46th Ward. 
     
    So? So, even in Chicago it might come as at least a mild surprise that Emily, Pippi and Koko are 
    cats, pets of Joann Wright, who is a community activist and foe of veteran Ald. Helen Shiller in 
    Uptown.  
     
    Wright and a group of other Shiller critics are pursuing extensive vote fraud allegations against 
    Shiller's political organization in connection with last spring's elections in which the alderman 
    won re‐election.  
     
    Wright  filed  applications  from  her  address  for  the  cats  –  making  up  birth  dates  and  Social 
    Security  numbers  for  them  –  under  the  federal  Motor  Voter  law  that  allows  registration  by 
    mail.  
     
    She did so to test the potential for "fraud and corruption" in Chicago's election processes. And 
    when she received the cats' cards, Wright promptly returned them to the Board of Elections.  
     
    Preemptively, lest she be charged with vote fraud, Wright sent with the cards a letter to board 
    executive director Lance Gough asserting her intent only to test the system and declaring that 
    she never intended to use the cards.  
     
    That she could receive them in the first place, with no evidence of the cats' ID or any check of 
    the purported Social Security numbers, Wright wrote, was both "frightening" and "dangerous" 
    to the proper workings of the registration and voting procedures.  
     
    Under the law, Wright said, a person carrying a cat's registration and a false ID, or no ID, could 
    vote  by  bringing  two  friends  to  the  polling  place  to  sign  affidavits  testifying  to  the  voter's 
    identity.  
     
    Such  affidavits  "are  filled  out  with  abandon"  on  Election  Day,  she  wrote,  and  "lots  of  people 
    bring  two  witnesses  with  them  to  vouch  for  their  identity.  This  then  creates  fraud  and  again 
    corrupts the election process."  
     
    Two other serious problems, she wrote, are "the way absentee ballots are handled and the way 
    the homeless are permitted to register at shelters (as many places as they want) and vote more 
    than once."  
     
    Her aim in registering her cats, Wright wrote, was to show the board "and everyone else how 
    shaky our election system is" and that "it needs a major overhaul."  
    Tom  Leach,  spokesman  for  the  Board  of  Elections,  dismissed  Wright's  cat  registrations  as  a 
    "cheap trick that doesn't prove a darn thing."  
     
    He  said  including  a  Social  Security  number  on  a  registration  application  is  optional.  Voters 
    voting for the first time on a by‐mail card are required to show up in person, Leach said, and 
    polling place judges would require and compare signatures from the voter and any witnesses 
    to his or her voting.  
     
    "There isn't any fraud‐proof system" anywhere, he said, but the safeguard in these situations is 
    that any false affidavits or phony voter IDs make the violators subject to prosecution.  
     
    Meantime,  Robert  Brooke,  who  recently  canvassed  Precinct  35  in  the  46th  Ward  and  found 
    more  than  a  third  of  the  registered  voters  there  do  not  live  at  the  addresses  listed  on  the 
    current voter rolls, has completed canvasses in Precincts 16 and 32.  
     
    Brooke, who is active in the group alleging fraud in last spring's elections, was turned away by 
    management at several scattered‐site housing projects and a few other properties.  
     
    But of the buildings where he was allowed to check registrations, Brooke found that in Precinct 
    16,  228  voters  were  listed  as  having  moved,  a  building  at  4729  N.  Beacon  with  33  registered 
    voters was found to be vacant now, and two voters were registered at a "no such address."  
     
    In  Precinct  32,  the  picture  was  much  the  same:  270  registered  voters  have  moved,  five  were 
    registered at "no such address," two at a strip mall and one in a Truman College driveway.  
     
    Uptown  has  a  lot  of  transient  residents.  But  Brooke's  numbers  do  leave  obvious  room  for 
    wondering just when all these registered voters moved on.  

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