Illinois Democrats have been tainted with the stench of corruption back to at least the days of Stephen Douglas. One county Democrat party, though, claims to be seeking to change that.

St. Clair County Democratic leadership has distributed election packets to countywide precinct committeemen, which include an affidavit stating that money from the party will not be used to buy votes.

The unusual action follows the vote buying convictions in June of five East St. Louis politicians. They had helped distribute more than $70,000 received by city Democratic precinct committeemen two days before the 2004 election from the county Democratic organization.

While St. Clair County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Robert Sprague could not be reached for comment, a fax received Monday from his Belleville law office included these documents given to precinct committeemen countywide for today's primary election:

• A one-page letter from Sprague warning that money from the county committee should be used only to pay to help get the vote out, including paying workers to canvass the precincts, for advertisements and to provide transportation to needy voters. The letter also advised that precinct leaders should "keep a record of all expenses" and "under no circumstances" use party money to pay for votes.

• An "affidavit," with room for a notary's signature, stating that a committeeman or election worker swears that no party money will be used "in violation of any federal, state or local laws or regulations."

• A one-page photocopy titled "Election Crimes" that outlined federal voting laws.

I donÂ’t buy this for a minute, given my experiences of working elections in St. Clair County. I remember an incident during one campaign in which a guy with our opponentÂ’s campaign told us within 30 votes how many votes we would be up prior to the announcement of the votes from East St. Louis and down after those votes came in. As recent convictions of prominent county Democrats show, the corruption continues.

Which leads us to this further Democrat commentary.

Sprague's letter to the committeemen also refers to "recent efforts by the Republicans and their friends to suppress the vote of Democrats in St. Clair County..." No further explanation was offered as to whether this referred to last year's federal vote fraud prosecution under a U.S. attorney appointed by a Republican president, or whether local Republicans were suppressing Democratic voters.

My interpretation is that Sprague is concerned that the feds are not allowing corruption as usual to continue in St. Clair County. As a result, IÂ’m willing to bet that the other protestations that vote buying is prohibited are not worth the paper they are printed on.

But then again, if the St. Clair County Democrats had any integrity to begin with, the memo would never have been necessary.

Posted by: Greg at 01:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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