•June 10, 2020•
By Jim Nowlan and Robert D. Michaelson

This essay is not about who should be elected president in November, but about something arguably as important: How to avoid a sloppy election count, which could throw the nation into chaos.
Election counts have been politicized throughout American history. As we are both native to Illinois, we have beaucoup homegrown examples. Over the early history of Chicago, for example, honest elections were considered quaint. In an 1883 election in the Windy City, the second precinct of the Ninth Ward recorded 1,183 votes — from the total of 351 persons found to be living in the precinct. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and other distinguished Americans were among those who signed in as voters. Need we go on?
In 1960, most close observers concluded that intensely loyal precinct officials of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, knowing who buttered their bread, stole the election in Illinois for John F. Kennedy. JFK “won” Illinois by 8,858 votes out of nearly 5 million cast statewide, on a surge of suspicious late-night returns from Daley’s most reliable precincts.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.