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Comment by ccleve | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine (and my successor as chairman of the Chicago Republican Party) filed a case in the U.S. Supreme Court this week over the same tactic right here in Chicago.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-michael-madigan-c...

If we win this thing, then filing sham candidates will become illegal in the U.S. It's an utterly corrupt practice.

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Not this particular case but just to give context on why padding the primary with sham candidates of the same ethnic group is an issue, but also in Chicago it has happened that people change their names to imply certain ethnic/heritage/characteristics like Phillip Spiwak (R) became Shannon P. O’Malley (D) to win an elected judge position in 2018 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-judge-candidat...

There was a movie about a person searching their Irish ancestors. Ended with the protagonist confronting their father, who admitted they made it up to win votes. The movie must be decades old now.

John Kerry comes to mind here, although at least the official story states that his grandfather chose an Irish name essentially through dumb luck.

Warren "Bill de Blasio" Wilhelm.

"Bobby" Jindal, "Ted" Cruz, etc.

Sorry, not from the US so I might be missing something, but the link you posted was about someone from the Democrats. Did your friend switch parties after that election (I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of thing had happened)?

It's a marriage of convenience. Until Madigan is indicted by the FBI (probably happening in the next 12mos, his underlings are helping the FBI now), if you are a (D) on his bad side, your choices are to exit Chicago politics or switch parties.

Right, that makes sense. Also, that sucks. Capital "P" politics really is a grubby business.

Why are Republicans suing over a Democratic primary? I'm doubting good faith.

Also this seems to be civil case, not a criminal one, so I'm not sure how it'd make anything illegal?

"Illegal" means contrary to the law. Plenty of things that are illegal but carry no criminal penalties.

As a practical matter, the court would rule that sham candidates are impermissible, and then their opponents would have an opportunity to remove them from the ballot via a civil lawsuit, or seek sanctions again whoever put them up, or collect civil damages, or in an extreme case overturn an election altogether.

This more seems like the Republicans are trying to tar a democratic candidate who will definitely win with some very slight of hand statements about "hispanics." Most likely it seems like there were two other people with historically-hispanic last names who also entered the election. Chicago is pretty damn hispanic if you haven't been there before and Chicago Democratic politics are especially contentious and nasty. This feels like a rat-f** job

Maybe because having a political affiliation you disagree with by no means incriminates you of having no morals or ethics.

Sure, in a perfect world. In the world of politics you let your opponents eat themselves.

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