Shocking news! Political corruption in East St. Louis!
Posted by Richard on June 2, 2005
Glenn Reynolds is surprised that a vote-buying story posted at Gateway Pundit isn’t getting more attention. I’m not. First of all, the defendants are minority Democrats, so most MSM reporters aren’t exactly salivating to go after them. Second, since when is inner-city vote buying big news? This is dog bites man. They’re on trial only because they were more brazen and less circumspect than most.
Here in Denver during election season, black community leaders suggest that campaigns need to budget a certain amount of "walking around money" to the community.
One thing about the story jumped out at me:
Some East St. Louis Democratic Party workers told Mark Kern days before he was elected St. Clair County Board chairman that voters would have to be paid to support him, the first witness in a federal vote fraud trial testified today.
…
Ellis, party chairman Charles Powell Jr. and three others are on trial in federal court at East St. Louis. Neither Youngblood nor Kern, the former mayor of Belleville, was charged. Youngblood turned out to be an FBI informer. Kern did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment about her testimony……On Oct. 30, the St. Clair County Democratic Party provided $67,000 to Ellis and other East St. Louis Democrats to get out the vote. No county party officials are charged in the case.
So, the ESL party officials who demanded money for buying votes are on trial, but the county party officials who bought the votes aren’t. Wonder why? Here’s a possible clue:
She [Youngblood] said Ellis, a party stalwart and then director of regulatory affairs, told Kern he was perceived in the predominantly-black community as a "racist’ and might need to spend $10 per vote to get support.
Pictures of Ellis and Youngblood, two of the ESL party leaders, make it clear that they’re black. Kern, the county-wide candidate, is perceived to be a racist — want to guess his ethnic heritage?
Anyone care to speculate on how the average pigmentation level of the county party officials who actually paid for the votes, but weren’t charged, compares to the pigmentation level of the middlemen in ESL who are on trial?
Of course, I could be wrong, it could have nothing to do with race. It could just be the same corrupt, lazy law enforcement attitude of going after the easy cases that leads cops to bust mainly low-level drug dealers instead of the big fish.
In fact, that’s probably the case. I’m sure there’s some variant of Occam’s razor that says you shouldn’t assume complex, evil motives when sheer laziness is enough to explain the behavior.
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