Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chicago Sun‐Times – August 6, 1999
Author: Raymond R. Coffey
Milton (Mike) Siegel, a longtime ally of Ald. Helen Shiller in her Uptown 46th Ward turf, is
registered to vote at 1140 W. Wilson, where he owns the Wooden Nickel saloon and where he
says he lives upstairs.
In a 1993 police report on a narcotics raid in which he was pinched on a charge of carrying a
concealed weapon, Siegel listed his address as 2918 W. Farragut on the Northwest Side.
Shiller foes say Siegel still really lives on Farragut, and regularly parks overnight there his
Cadillac with a vanity plate license reading "Luckie."
They have filed complaints with the Board of Elections and gotten nowhere. And in last
spring's aldermanic elections, Siegel voted again from his Wooden Nickel address.
This time around, for Shiller’s re‐election, Bachelor Hotel proprietor Siegel also had 83 people
registered as voters at that single‐room‐occupancy property at 1134 W. Wilson, which has a
legal maximum capacity of 50.
Now, in the aftermath of Shiller’s April re‐election, Robert R. Brooke, a resident and voter in
the 46th Ward's Precinct 35, has undertaken a canvas of registered voters there based on the
current Board of Elections poll sheet.
Brooke visited every building in the precinct, except for four to which he could not gain access,
to check whether voters registered at Precinct 35 addresses actually lived there. His purpose
was to "see how flawed the current poll sheets are." And what he found was that 330 of 952
voters – more than a third – no longer live where the poll sheet still has them registered.
That makes them ineligible to vote – but their names remain on the poll sheet, creating
obvious opportunity for manipulation and fraud.
What was particularly astounding in Brooke's canvas was that 60 people registered at Siegel's
Bachelor Hotel no longer lived there; many had not lived there for two or three years, deskmen
at the hotel told Brooke. Brooke has no way – yet – of knowing how many of them may have
voted, or had votes cast in their names. But voting records are expected to be available from
the Board of Elections soon.
Brooke, who sent me 17 pages of names of people who don't live where they are registered to
vote, intends to present his findings to the board.
Allegations of voting fraud on the part of Shiller’s political organization are, and long have
been, endemic in Uptown with its large proportion of homeless, jobless residents.
A few years ago, around the time of Shiller’s last previous election, complaints were filed that
her son was registered six times.
Still, Brooke was taken aback at the potential for fraud and manipulation, particularly in larger
transient‐type properties like Siegel's Bachelor Hotel.
At the Darlington Hotel, 4700 N. Racine, for instance, he found that 30 people still listed as
voters did not live there.
At the Hotel Wacker North, 1207 W. Leland, he found 60. At St. Martha's Manor, 4621 N.
Racine, he counted 16.
Brooke also found three people registered from a currency exchange (now closed) on another
Siegel property at 1138 W. Wilson.
Brooke said he realizes the larger buildings have a large turnover, but that the disqualification
rate on registered voters runs to between 50 percent and 75 percent.
"These inflated (voter) rolls certainly can lead to manipulation," he said. "This reality can lead
to many irregularities, as you have already seen by others' documentation."
The trouble, in the view of Shiller foes, is that the Board of Elections does little or nothing
about persistent fraud in Uptown voting. They recently presented an 80‐page report on what
happened last April to the Board, the U.S. attorney's office, Mayor Daley and State's Attorney
Dick Devine.
Response so far? Zero.