First Day of Early Voting Tainted By 'Electioneering'

Early voters in Chicago Heights got a surprise Monday when a huge turnout of more than 250 voters led to suspicions of intimidation and voter influencing inside City Hall, where voting was taking place.

Cook County Clerk David Orr told the SouthtownStar he had to send a representative to clear out a group of people who were passing out campaign literature and "talking politics" to the voters. City Clerk Ethel Taylor said the group was being bussed in.

"They were electioneering. We had to call the county," Taylor said. "They were bringing busloads of people that were assisting in voting."

Taylor said the group was doing much more than telling people who to vote for.

"Some of the people were actually going in and pushing the screens for the elderly and homeless people," Taylor said. "They wore green shirts and orange shirts and they were all part of the same party. On the shirts it told people what to punch and the names of the party."

The group arrived in buses and vans with signs on them, but Taylor did not specify what those signs said. Officials said the group was from Ford Heights, where there are no early voting sites.

Chicago Heights resident Pat Flemming, who said she was taking her mother to vote early, said the group was openly supporting the Unity Party.

"What really caught my attention was people were wearing shirts that said 'Unity Party.' The whole ballot was on their T-shirts." Flemming said. "There were about 10 in the lobby and right outside the doors. It was a mob of people there."

Flemming said the group was even inside the council chambers where voting was taking place.

"They visibly had their (palm) cards out inside the polling place," Flemming said. "They were all saying, ‘You know what to do. You know what to vote,' and all that stuff inside where the voting was taking place.”

First Ward aldermanic candidate Robert McCoy said he saw the end of the fiasco.

"I know 60 people were rejected because they recently registered and the ID they had didn't match the registration," McCoy said. "They were also handing out palm cards, and people had T-shirts on with the candidates’ names on them. They were doing all this right here (outside the council chambers)."

Orr told the SouthtownStar that Chicago Heights police came to help clear out the area. No one could confirm how many people from the group had voted before the Cook Clounty Clerk's office and police forced them to leave.

Additional reporting by Homewood-Flossmoor Patch Editor Ryan Fitzpatrick contributed to this story.