>" Mayor Daley already had a reputation for stuffing ballot boxes and giving ward bosses and precinct captains vote quotas. Two recounts of Chicago-area voting later showed that Democrats had likely stolen tens of thousands of votes, but most were in the Cook County state's attorney race.
Between classes at the University of Chicago and into the night, sometimes until 2 a.m., Schiller joined other members of Wexler's team to conduct interviews and cull through ballots and election judges' tallies. When Schiller misplaced a draft of a report, a supervisor feared someone had broken in and stolen it.
Wexler's report, issued in April 1961, found "substantial" miscounts in the 1,367 precincts it examined, including unqualified voters, misread voting machines and math mistakes. In one precinct, voters asked where to deposit tickets for a drawing for hams. In another, a precinct captain handed out slips of paper entitling voters to free lunches.
Wexler brought contempt charges against 667 election officials, but the cases were dismissed by a Democratic judge. Three people were convicted on criminal charges.
Schiller thinks now that a Democratic "mechanism was in place" to make sure that party's candidates won — not just in the presidential race, but in local contests. As for the Kennedy-Nixon results in Illinois, he says, "looking at the margin of victory, it's very hard to believe that there wasn't at least a significant likelihood that the outcome would have been different in the state."..."<
Chicago ties cast shadow on 1960 presidential win - USATODAY.com
