Foreigners Landing On Voter Rolls

October 02, 1985|By Desiree F. Hicks.

Wayne was born in Belize, Central America, but was living in Chicago in 1982 when a man approached him on the street and asked him if he wanted to register to vote. After the man insisted, Wayne decided to comply.

He went to a registration center at his home, a 24-story West Side public housing complex. Though Wayne is not a U.S. citizen, he was given the necessary application for registration and voted in the November, 1982, election.

Wayne and his sisters, Diane and Alice, who were also registered voters at one time, told a task force committee Monday how easy it was for them to register to vote in Chicago, though they are not U.S. citizens. The three said that they were never required to show identification and that they listed false birthplace information.

The siblings, whose identities were not disclosed, testified before the state Senate Republican Task Force on Vote Fraud.

A.D. Moyer, district director for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, told task force members that 25,000 and 40,000 illegal and legal aliens in Chicago are registered voters.

Moyer told State Sen. Walter Dudycz (R., Chicago), task force chairman, that many of these noncitizens have registered so they can get a voter registration card for identification, adding that the card is ``a quick ticket into the unemployment compensation system.``

Moyer also testified that many of the aliens have been given free liquor and food as inducements to register to vote in their districts. He cited the case of a Near West Side hotel that threw a large party for alien voters who supported then-Mayor Jane Byrne in the 1983 primary.

Tom Leach of the city`s Board of Election Commissioners urged the three-member task force to support legislation creating full-time election judges to cut the high rate of vote fraud.

Former U.S. Atty. Dan Webb spoke in favor of such legislation at a Sept. 18 hearing of the task force. Webb also expressed support for a law that would require voters to be fingerprinted when they sign a ballot application.

Dudycz said he, too, favors fingerprint legislation as a ``reinforcement tool`` to combat voter fraud. He said fingerprinting would be used only if

``serious allegations of problems (arose) in a particular precinct.``

The task force is gathering information to draft election reform legislation in the next session of the Illinois General Assembly. The other panel members are Senators David Barkhausen (R., Lake Bluff) and Judy Baar Topinka (R., Riverside).

A federal grand jury was convened to investigate allegations of widespread vote fraud in the city`s 1982 election, and as a result, 58 people were convicted of federal election crimes.