Have a Nice Day

Diane from Respublica has an excellent post on efforts downstate to clean up election fraud:The Belleville News-Democrat reports that 900 voters were registered in both East St. Louis and other parts of St. Clair County or in more than one precinct in East St. Louis. The St. Clair County board approved an election reform resolution which calls for:

• procedures which would cross reference voter lists in East St Louis and the county.
• requiring the St. Clair County Clerk and the East St. Louis election board to perform audits of voter rolls to ensure precincts comply with the law as to number of voters per precinct. This could well eliminate 14 of East St. Louis' 44 precincts.
• Ask political parties to submit an audit for publication of their financial records after each election
• Better training of election judges

It would be nice to see Cook County adopt this kind of reform but I won't hold my breath. Mark Brown has a column today in the Sun Times on the mayor's brother complaining to the State Board of Elections about dirty tricks in his ward. Brown ends with this:

Talk about precedent. I wonder how many of those other old school Democratic operatives are ready to establish the State Board of Elections as the arbiter of fair campaign tactics.

Meanwhile, over at Rich Miller's Capital Fax blog, readers are weighing in on whether Illinois is the most corrupt state in the country, and what, if anything, can be done about it.

Have a nice day.