In Chicago, Reports Say Voters Received Ballots Already Marked for Rahm Emanuel

Inthesetimes.com reports: "... Sam Dreessen, a 26-year-old unemployed DePaul University graduate (and former In These Timesintern) who’s been voting in Chicago since 2006, walked into his polling place at Kozminski Community Academy on 54th and Drexel, a mostly black neighborhood in the city’s 5th Ward. He approached the election judge at the table and, like thousands of Chicagoans on this mayoral election day, received a paper ballot and a felt-tip pen. But, he says, one of the two blanks—the one you fill in to vote for Mayor Rahm Emanuel—was already filled in. Dreessen, a volunteer for Emanuel’s opponent... smelled a rat. “I just said to one of them, the one who gave me the ballot, ‘This has already been filled out. I want one that’s blank.’ And he acted surprised. He said, ‘I don’t know how that happened.' And he even said there had been other ballots with similar problems.’ He gave me one that was blank, and I told him more than once that they should look at all the ballots, the ones that hadn’t been handed out yet, to see if this happened.” Dreessen says he was too shocked to even take a picture. “And I thought, ‘I don’t know, this must be happening to other people.’ It just seemed to be so crude.” He reported it next to the Garcia campaign office in nearby Woodlawn, where they said they had already received similar complaints. Then he took to Facebook, where he posts under the name “Barry Lyndon.” As of 6:08, 52 minutes before the polls close at 7, his post had been shared 538 times."...