“Obviously we’re not encouraging political work in government offices, but why not encourage people to vote when they come into a government office looking for help on a government program or service?” asked Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker and Illinois Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan. “Remember, these are the people (Republicans) … who basically don’t like anybody to be able to vote. They want to go back to an era when it was very hard to vote.”
Ralph attributes the quote to Da Speaker. Given the Speaker is the most ironically titled official in Springfield, that’s probably appropriate.
Orr gets mentioned by me because I’m still happy about the optical scan choice.
Cook County Clerk David Orr, who championed early voting, said many of the changes do not help one party or the other.
“It’s good public policy,” he said. “I’m telling you, quite frankly, that I support things that I believe will be good for the electorate. Yes, there are hard-core Democrats and hard-core Republicans, but there are a lot of people in between.”
When Steve is sober, which is not often unless he has changed in 13 years, he speaks for the Speaker.
Why is this ironic? We let drivers licence employees register people to vote and don’t consider this political, why should it become politicized because a legislator’s district office personnel do it?
The fact is that we don’t really need to register voters at all in this country and it’s only a way to keep minorities from voting.
The irony is that the Speaker is the least likely person in Springfield to speak.