One of the wonderful things about the 24-hour news cycle is that late night election coverage will broadcast just about anything live. At 1:40 a.m. CST, Tony Paraica — the GOP candidate for Cook County Board president — went on WMAQ NBC 5 and in an angry voice complained because all of the ballots hadn't made it to the board of elections.
"We're not going to let them steal the vote," Mr. Paraica screamed to his supporters at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Chicago. "We should all march down there (to the Cook County Board of Elections) and insist that they can't steal our votes."
After a few more minutes of screaming and hecklers decrying the "Democrats" and "the machine," Paraica concluded his remarks with supporters shouting that they would make the walk to the Board of Elections. Paraica's campaign manager said that the ballots which still weren't counted were from "white ethnic wards" — effectively playing the race card (Stroger is black, Paraica is white).
In spite of Paraica's claim that ballots were being delivered to the BOE by people "in plain clothes" rather than uniformed sheriff's deputies, NBC reported that deputies had, in fact, delivered all of the ballots. The reporter also said that the candidate's lawyer was already at the BOE.
Paraica also complained that Cook County had spent $60 million dollars for technology and that he was "outraged" by the "incompetence."
"This is outrageous," Paraica said. "We're not going to let anyone steal this election."
Paraica claimed that he would stay at the board "all night" to make sure that every vote is counted.
As WMAQ went to commercial I realized that this is just like Florida in 2000 with angry Republicans trying to intimidate election officials. Even on election night late night TV still shows reruns.
No comments:
Post a Comment