It turns out, nobody actually gives a crap about the integrity of our electoral process. Not the President. Not the Congress, either chamber. Not the media. Not Facebook or Twitter. And, it turns out, not the courts.
We know that the 15th Amendment has never meant anything to the Supreme Court. We know that the courts will allow voter suppression under the guise of “voter ID” laws. We know that John Roberts has incredibly ruled that gerrymandering is a non-justiciable issue. But even when the courts catch somebody in the act of manipulating an elections, they don’t care. Nobody cares.
Michael Madigan is the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. He’s the longest serving state or federal leader in the entire damn country. He’s an old-school, machine politics Democrat, the kind I’d like to believe that God sent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Earth to destroy.
Over time, the demographics of his Southwest Chicago district have changed. It’s now 70% Latino, which is different from when he first won the seat in 1971. In 2016, he got a primary challenge from Jason Gonzales. Gonzales was a political consultant with degrees from Duke, Harvard, and MIT, running his first campaign. Gonzales alleges that soon after he announced, two additional Latino candidates also announced primary challenges: Joe Barboza and Grasiela Rodriguez. Thing is, neither Barboza or Rodriguez actively campaigned for the seat. Gonzales alleges that the two were planted by Madigan to dilute or split the Latino vote in the district.
Madigan beat Gonzales by about 10,000 votes, the other two Latino candidates combined for around 2,000 votes. Mathematically, they were not dispositive in the outcome.
Still, Gonzales sued, because putting fake candidates on the ballot to dilute the minority vote is surely not how representative democracy is supposed to work.
The district court in Illinois AGREED with Gonzales, that there was significant evidence that Madigan orchestrated the placement of additional Latino candidates on the ballot to hurt Gonzales. The district court simply determined that it didn’t care. From Courthouse News:
[U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly] found substantial support for Gonzales’ claims.
“A jury could reasonably conclude that individuals closely tied to Madigan’s campaign manager convinced Barboza and Rodriguez to enter the race — against Madigan. … This evidence supports a reasonable inference that Madigan authorized or at least was aware of the recruitment effort,” Kennelly wrote.
He continued: “A reasonable jury could find that Barboza and Rodriguez’s purported candidacies for Madigan’s office were orchestrated by Madigan’s associates, working on Madigan’s behalf.”
But Madigan’s dirty tricks were not a secret from voters. On the contrary, Gonzales’ campaign focused heavily on Madigan’s deceptive tactic: that Madigan placed sham candidates on the ballot in an effort to keep his seat.
“This publicity placed the alleged misconduct squarely within the political realm, enabling voters to rebuke Madigan by electing his challenger. Instead, Madigan prevailed by a substantial margin,” Kennelly ruled.
I find this to be a consistent problem with judicial opinions about electoral integrity that I don’t like: courts refuse to punish electoral wrongdoing on the theory that voters knew about the wrongdoing when they went to the polls.
The “informed voting public” is a legal fiction. Voters are ill-informed. Even when you try to inform them, we live in a world choking on so much fake news that we can’t even agree on a common set of “facts.” Refusing to punish candidates or campaigns for electoral shenanigans is an INVITATION for unethical campaigners to engage in more shenanigans.
Michael Madigan didn’t even GET a primary challenger in 2018. Let me say that again: this 77-year-old white man who has been in office for 48 years and represents at district that is 70% Latino DIDN’T GET A PRIMARY CHALLENGER IN 2018 DURING A PROGRESSIVE WAVE YEAR! That’s not a fucking compliment. It’s an indication that the Chicago machine is still plenty strong enough to snuff out opposition. What the hell good is an informed voter if the system allows powerful incumbents to silence dissent? Or, as Agent Smith might say, what good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?
Chicago politicians have been doing this for a long, long time. Maybe next century courts will finally decide to do something about it, cause they’ve dropped the ball on the last two.
Dirty Tricks Don’t Change Illinois Election Result [Courthouse News Service]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.