Let no voice be unheard
In the Chicago Sun-Times, Frank Main and Carlos Sadovi enlighten with Candidates lean on gang members to get out the vote:

Come Election Day, gang members across the city will likely trade their baseball caps and street colors for white shirts and ties.

On Feb. 25, they'll take a holiday from the round-the-clock drug dealing that fuels Chicago's billion-dollar narcotics trade. Instead, they'll be selling candidates.

Fanning out into the neighborhoods, they'll hand out palm cards, shuttle elderly voters to the polls, tally the votes and--on the less admirable side--tear down opponents' signs, intimidate opponents' supporters and maybe pick a few fights.

And then, when their candidates win, the gang-bangers will step up and ask, "Where's mine?" In at least 10 of Chicago's 50 wards, a Sun-Times investigation has found, gang members are expected to work in next February's elections as political foot soldiers, a practice loaded with dangerous ethical conflicts for the candidates.

Thuggery in Chicago elections? I'm shocked!

On Nov. 5 in Humboldt Park, a gang leader halted drug sales and ordered gang members to get out the vote for the Democrats, said a police investigator who asked not to be identified.

"These guys passed out palm cards for $5 an hour when they could have made $40 an hour selling dope," he said.

Some candidates say they are simply reluctant to turn away enthusiastic volunteers, gang members or not. Other candidates openly court gang members.

"I try to use them in every election," said Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th), who estimated a fourth of her workers in the November election were gang members. She paid 40 to 50 gang members $25 each to get out the vote, she said, and plans to recruit gang members for the Feb. 25 aldermanic election.

It's great of the boyz to take a one day paycut.

To be fair, some of the politicos say they're against it, including Mayor Junior Daley. But it's hard to figure out how seriously to take it.

The electoral clout of Chicago street gangs peaked in the early 1990s with 21st Century V.O.T.E., a political action committee tied to the Gangster Disciples. The group launched voter registration drives and unsuccessfully ran two candidates for alderman. One, Wallace "Gator" Bradley, a former enforcer for the GDs, was photographed in the White House with President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.

Wooeee! It wouldn't be much of a challenge to pick out a perp in that line-up!