Political Satire: Having trouble surviving these times? You’re not alone. Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:
An idealistic teenager, living in the 51st ward of a fictional city in middle America, volunteers at the local party headquarters, and learns a lesson or two about modern urban politics.
Little Pavel Approaches the Bench
By John F. Di Leo
Pavel walked into 51st Ward HQ just as the Boss walked out… and Pavel did a double-take.
The Boss, 51st Ward Committeeman Bill Marcy, was dressed in a tweed suit as always, no surprise there… but the two men who left with him were decidedly unfamiliar, charging through the doorway like neither Pavel nor anything else should be in their way. Wearing crisply pressed charcoal pinstripe suits, just shooting their cuffs enough for the cufflinks to catch your eye, carrying fine leather briefcases instead of the ubiquitous laptop bags, they sure didn’t fit in at this shabby old ward office!
Finding Pockets at his desk in the corner, Pavel Syerov, Jr. (Paul to his friends) plopped a fresh bag of honey wheat braid pretzels into the empty bowl on the collating table and greeted the old man. “Hello, Pockets! What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing much,” replied the old deputy committeeman. “Coupla cases of printing just came in, gotta collate them for a third class mailing; if you could gimme a hand with that, it’d be great, Paully. I’m just glad those suits are outa here at last.”
Pavel headed back to the refrigerator for a couple of drinks – a diet cola for himself, a longneck for Pockets – then headed back and opened up the pretzels. “Yeah, those guys plowed out of here with the Boss like they were clearing an ice flow in the St. Laurence Seaway. Who were they? Candidates?”
“Nah, Paully, even worse,” chuckled Pockets. “Lawyers.”
“Really? Why were they here? Something up?” Pavel fired up his memory bank as he could tell this might be a story worth telling his parents when he got home. The seventeen-year-old had been unable to find a summer job, so his parents convinced him that helping out at the local ward HQ over the summer would be more educational than summer school – and were they ever right! – so he had continued to stop by a couple times a week even after school started up again in the fall.
“Well, son, the higher-ups sent some lawyers around to talk with the bosses about what we do in the precincts. They didn’t have two words for me, but they were closeted in with the Boss for two hours.” Pockets cracked open his beer and took a swig. “Brother, of all the times for a lawyer visit, ya know? Middle of an election, the office fulla registration cards, pollsheets, mailings, bumper stickers, volunteers… had five old ladies in here writing postcards while the lawyers were in the office with the Boss. They had me blasting NPR on the radio to make sure the old ladies didn’t hear their conversation… Dunno what for; the Boss had his office soundproofed when we moved here, years ago… Belt and suspenders, I guess.”
Pockets reached for a pretzel, and Pavel asked for details. “What were they talking about all that time? Fundraising?” Pavel knew that nothing was more important to the closing weeks of a campaign than the money to pay for it, and he suspected that campaign finance reform might have made this an issue.
“Nah, nothing like that. They’re just making the rounds because they don’t want a repeat of last time. They wanna make sure that we don’t have any arrests… or if we do, that there’s plenty of plausible deniability, ya know?” He took another swig and reached for another pretzel. Honey wheat braids – his favorite. Between munches, he continued.
“See, Paully, there’s been some bad news lately. States are prosecuting for vote fraud. It’s got some of the boys scared.”
Pockets pulled out an article he had downloaded from Marathon Pundit, and began to read out loud: “’Ex-ACORN Employee Pleads Guilty to Vote Fraud Felony,’ it says. The guy worked for ACORN, and was filing fake voter registration forms… ya know, made-up names at real addresses, cards with residency at empty lots… ya know, our kinda thing. Well, Milwaukee County, the Wisconsin Attorney General, and, it says, the feds too, all joined together to prosecute the case. And they got this guy, Kevin Clancy, to plead guilty.”
“But Pockets,” asked Pavel, “I thought you said nobody ever prosecutes for this stuff?”
Pockets shook his head. “They never usedta. For years, they never did. So we never had any trouble getting our people to do stuff for us. If we needed the super in an apartment building to make up a few fake names on the mailboxes in the lobby… if we needed a team to roundtable some registration cards… if we needed some folks to file a ton of absentee ballot requests for people we know wouldn’t really be showing up on election day (for whatever reason!)… we never had a problem getting folks to help out. They knew it was no risk, ya know?”
Pavel was starting to understand. “But now that there’s been a prosecution, you’re afraid people will hesitate a little more? Come on, Pockets, one prosecution, in another state yet? Are your people that chicken?”
Pockets drank his beer a moment, then explained, in sotto voce. “It’s not, actually, just one prosecution, in one other state. That’s the problem. This one in Milwaukee, it was just one of dozens of prosecutions in Wisconsin alone, after 2008. Finally getting resolved now, after all this time. Just in time for a mighty tough election, darn it.”
Pavels eyebrows jumped in his surprise. “Tough, Pockets? You guys said the polls were wrong, that we’re gonna do just fine, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly, Paully. We said we’d prove the polls wrong. Not the same thing. We manipulate the vote, remember? However the numbers come in, we make sure they’re better before they go out. But that’s dependent on doing what we always do.” Pockets polished off his beer (that was quick), and continued. “No, if the word gets out about this, who knows, ya know? If we hafta end the day on November 2 with just the real votes cast by living, breathing human beings, well, it won’t be so easy. Gimme another grenade, wouldja? This is thirsty work.”
Pavel got up to get another longneck for him, and probed further. “What are these other prosecutions you’re talking about, Pockets? Are they catching any big names?”
“Well, the thing is, the Boss doesn’t like it to get out, but there’s been some prosecution going on for several years now, ever since the mid 2000s. They don’t make news, because the press isn’t interested in it, and it’s always the small time folks who get nailed. Ya know, the people who sign the fake registration form, the people who forge a signature on somebody else’s absentee ballot application, and so forth. Since they’re not famous people, their bosses don’t get nailed, so the people convicted don’t make the papers. But once in a while, now and then, they do.”
Pavel refilled the pretzel bowl and asked where these prosecutions were going on.
“It’s all over the place, Paully. In Nevada, they caught a really clever operation at a casino, where crooked dealers were being paid, and paying off, voter registration fraud. I still don’t completely understand it… considering how casinos always have heavy state and federal law enforcement looking for cheating at the card games, why on earth wouldja wanna do anything surreptitious? I mean, you’re just begging to be caught by somebody who’s looking for double-dealing. The first rule of ballot box stuffing is that you do it when nobody’s watching!”
“Yeah, I see what you mean, Pockets. I sure can’t imagine trying it at a casino. They were asking to be caught. Who was dumb enough to try that approach?”
“Oh, ACORN, of course,” Pockets answered with a grunt of disgust. They used to be a dependable source for us, but they got sloppy after Bush II got in, and I think they got desperate. Now they try everything, no matter how blatant, and they’re getting’ caught all over the place. Four ACORN folks in Kansas City in 2006… … these five in Wisconsin from 2008… I remember six more in St Louis in 2004 and since… Yeah, ACORN is getting nailed all over the country, and it’s putting all our volunteers on the edge of their seats.”
Pavel chewed a pretzel in silence for a moment, then said “But now that ACORN has disbanded, the prosecutions must be ending, right?”
Pockets chuckled. “Disbanded? They never disbanded. They said they did, in their fall from grace last year, but they didn’t shut down. They changed their names in some states, cut their staffs everywhere… but the money that comes in still hasta go somewhere, so it does. They’ve got a million different names – Project Vote, Operation Big Vote – ya know, variations on the same theme. They’re all still ACORN; they just changed their names and tax filings for PR purposes.”
Pavel remembered the millions – or was it billions? – of dollars in the 2009 “Stimulus” plan – ARRA – that had been earmarked for ACORN to manage. “So you mean, instead of all those donations, and government grants and things, being stopped, they just basically change the name on the check, huh? So nothing really changes?”
“Yeah, Paully, that’s the idea. Nothing’s supposed to change. But we’ve become too dependent on ACORN over the years. Running morons like Gore and Kerry and Biden, who can’t seem to keep their foot outta their mouths for five minutes… we’ve hadda steal more and more votes to win any races lately. It was always supposed to be just a little bit here and there, to help in the tight races, but now we’re depending on the huge numbers that only the brazen activities of ACORN can provide. Way too dependent.”
Pockets looked at his empty bottle and Pavel got the hint… he got up to get a replacement, and Pockets continued.
“See, ACORN registered 1.3 million in 2008. They were bound to raise eyebrows with that, especially when they started bragging about their numbers. When the party files false registrations, we don’t file press releases! But these jackasses do, and of course, that attracts the eyes of prosecutors.”
Pavel delivered the next grenade – was he imagining things, or was Pockets drinking more as the election approached? – and commented “But if they’re still in place, and they’re still doing it, then what are we worrying about? It’s not the party who’s getting the attention, it’s ACORN. So we’ve got plausible deniability, right? More than arm’s length, as they say?”
Pockets answered “Yeah, you’d think that… and that was our idea for years. Take the ACORN registrations, so they’re taking the big risks, and then we just vote the votes, our usual ways, which is harder to catch. Think about election day: during a lull, you vote three names. During the next lull, you vote three more. A bus drives in with forty people with claiming to be names already on the pollsheet and ya let ‘em vote (the New Orleans Method). And then at the end of the day when ya know how many more ya need, you have a federal judge keep the polls open so you can mix in more fakes along with the crowd of real voters late into the evening (the St. Louis Method).”
Pockets took a long slow swig and said “Yeah, we had a great operation going. But they got greedy, and now it’s all in jeopardy.”
“Why does ACORN get all the prosecutions, and not us, Pockets?”
“Well, that’s the odd thing, Paully. I wonder that myself, but states attorneys and attorneys general all say that what we do is harder to prosecute. It’s easy to prosecute ACORN, they’re not creative enough to make up believable names, so the prosecutors just look for a stack with a card for Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, and go at it. It’s like a magnet for prosecutors.” Pockets took another swig. “Man, those ACORN people are careless.”
Pavel tried to turn the conversation back to the party. “So, if the registrations aren’t coming in as much anymore, are we out of luck this election?”
“No, not exactly, Paully. Just because the ACORN folks are getting arrested doesn’t mean their past work has gone away. There are still millions of fictitious voters on the rolls from the past, and we do our best to not clean ‘em up. So there’s still plenty of votes to steal if we have the courage. The problem is our judges and our volunteers. Some of ‘em are getting spooked. We’re afraid they won’t be as aggressive if they hear about the flurry of prosecutions.”
“What can we do about it, Pockets?” Pavel asked.
“Well, a lot of it is out of our hands. The press, for the most part, hides the stories. They’re not really letting it get out that there’s vote fraud prosecution on the radar of a lot of prosecutors all over the country. Didja hear about the two guys they convicted in St Clair County, in downstate Illinois, just a couple of weeks ago, for example?”
Pavel shook his head No.
“Yup, Paully, this is what I’m talking about. Thank heaven for the news media. Two guys from Cahokia pled guilty a couple weeks ago to vote fraud in a local election last year. They’re turning state’s evidence and they’re gonna help with the prosecution of a coupla county board members down there. The whole area of East St. Louis is a cesspool of vote fraud, even more than our neighborhood… but does anybody know it? Nope. The press doesn’t cover it. You’ve gotta read the conservative bloggers, like Marathon Pundit and Illinois Review… which, luckily, our volunteers usually don’t do!”
Pavel could see why. If they read sites like those, they’d hardly be Democrats for long. “Let’s just say we were prosecutors, what would we focus on to catch our people? I mean, so we know what to be most careful with?”
Pockets thought a minute. “Well, some of our best tools are lulls… When things are quiet, a judge can fill out a fake ballot application and vote a fake ballot. If pollwatchers, or other judges, don’t take bathroom breaks, lunch breaks, coffee breaks, smoke breaks, then we have fewer lulls for our people to utilize. That’s a biggie. So we count on lots of breaks.”
Pockets continued. “And when we get the first position at the table, we get the opportunity to check – or not check – the person who asks for a ballot. A good judge would see that the signature doesn’t match, or that a 30-year-old obviously can’t be this 75-year-old registered name, and can challenge the signature or demand ID. So we’ve gotta make sure we get our guy at the first position, issuing the ballots. If the enforcers wanted to make sure that we can’t get away with anything, they’d make sure they keep an eye on that first position.”
This was getting fun, as Pockets thought about it from an enforcer’s point of view. “And at the end of the day, when you’re closing up the polls, we always mix up the provisional ballots with the regular ballots if we can, so that there’s no way to separate them if they’re later found to be false. This is really important in cases where there’s a recount. That’s one of the ways we elected Al Franken to the Senate… provisional ballots get mixed in, so if they find eventually that some of ‘em were fraudulent, what’s done is done, ya know? Ya can’t put the cork back in the bottle!”
Pavel was taking notes. Some of his friends were planning on being pollwatchers on election day, and they could use the advice. Not that he was going to tell Pockets what the info was intended for, of course!
“But really, Paully, what it comes down to is this: If our people think there’s no chance of getting caught, they’ll make the most of every opportunity. But if they think that there’s prosecution going on – if they think there’s really a chance of being arrested for election fraud – then maybe they’ll hold back, be like real judges and not help us out like they usually do. Imagine a thousand judges in Chicago being too scared to steal for us… that could cost us twenty thousand votes, or more. Enough to let people like Keats and Patlak get in!”
“You think there’s a chance of them being that scared, Pockets?”
“Well, we hope not, but it’s possible. The stories are out there. There are prosecutors salivating at getting national headlines with their own stories, now that those bums at ACORN have made it a moment of gotcha journalism. Our best allies may have ruined it for us all.”
Pockets took a last swig and polished off yet another longneck. “We just hafta hope the word doesn’t get out that people are prosecuting for this now. If it stays in the conservative blogs, we have a shot. But if it goes viral… if people spread the word, or if the mainstream press picks it up more, then we might really be in trouble on election day.”
Pockets sat back and sighed. “Nobody wants to go to jail for stealing votes, and now that it’s a real possibility, we’re all scared that our people will chicken out. We’ll push as hard as we can on them, of course… their patronage jobs are on the line, after all… but our greatest fear is that, maybe, for the first time, maybe some of ‘em will push back!”
Copyright 2010-2024 John F. Di Leo
This is a work of fiction, and any similarity with any person, living or dead, is unintentional. The Tales of Little Pavel were originally published in serial form in Illinois Review, from 2010 through 2016, and the full collection of stories about Little Pavel and the denizens of the 51st Ward is available in paperback or eBook, exclusively from Amazon. Republished with permission.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon, in either paperback or eBook. His latest book, “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Three,” was just published in November, 2023.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
1 thought on “The Tales of Little Pavel – Episode 12: Little Pavel Approaches the Bench”