by John Price
Mike had been hired by the Election Commissioners because he was a Republican. By law, the office had to have some employees of the opposite political party. St. Louis hadn’t voted Republican since 1949. So, he immediately recognized that he had a problem. A big problem.
As a token Republican who had uncovered what appeared to be documentary evidence of voter fraud, he knew his job would be in jeopardy the minute he talked with anyone about what he had found. If he went to his supervisor, who quite likely had some knowledge, if not downright involvement, in the fraud, he would be fired. If he went to the media, he suspected he would be scapegoated and maybe even accused of concocting the scheme for public attention, to help his party in the upcoming election. If he did nothing, just put the ballots back, he could be imprisoned if someone else found the ballots later. His fingerprints were now on hundreds of pieces of paper, not easily cleaned off. If he destroyed the ballots, he knew he could be accused of destroying evidence of voter fraud, a serious offense. Mike Chapel was stuck.
Not knowing how long it might be before someone entered the storage room, he took what he thought was the only prudent course of action. He stuffed the ballots into the bottom of a large miscellaneous records filing box that he located and slit open. He then replaced the hasp and lock on the ballot box as well as he could and stacked the boxes on the ballot box just he had found them when he entered the storage room. He needed time to think, and pray, and now he could do so without an immediate need to decide. It was then that he realized that the box he had discovered was only one of what looked like maybe sixty identical boxes, all stacked behind the one he found and all locked with identical locks. He pulled several of the boxes out, confirming that they were all locked. Based on shaking them and hearing rustling ballots inside, it appeared that they were also stuffed. Mike knew that they all should have been empty. If the ballot boxes contained what he now thought they undoubtedly contained, a monumental fraud was just sitting, waiting to be counted. He knew he had to do something, but what? Mike Castle, of course, had no way of knowing then what would eventually happen in American politics and government because of his chance discovery.
FOUR
St. Louis, Missouri-Election Offices
It came to him at 2:37 AM. Mike Chapel had tossed and turned most of the night, worrying about his discovery of voter fraud, his eye on the orange numbers of his alarm clock. Then he suddenly knew what he had to do. Why didn’t I think of this earlier, he wondered? I could have gotten to sleep sooner. Mike’s majors at UMSL were political science and computer studies, which led him to a summer-intern job at the nation’s second largest voting machine manufacturer, located in Illinois. His early morning epiphany was simply that he would have to find out if the voter fraud went beyond paper ballots locked away in ballot boxes and hidden in a storage room. Once he saw his course of action, he slept soundly late into Saturday morning.
Mike had access to the St. Louis election offices via a magnetic strip card, first given to him when he was hired. He had only used it twice, when he needed to catch up on some work, so he knew the card would grant him entry. He waited until late afternoon, on the off chance that a fellow employee might come in on a Saturday morning, but a government employee’s late Saturday afternoon visit, he concluded, was highly unlikely.
Once he was in the election offices, located on Tucker Boulevard in downtown St. Louis., he went to his desk and pulled up on his monitor the listing by serial number for the City’s mechanical lever voting machines, all four hundred and fifty of them. The large metal machines were heavy and unwieldy, usually requiring two or more persons to move them. The City had used them for so long that no one now working in the office knew how old they actually were. The City had balked at investing in newer electronic voting machines, one Commissioner arguing that the new machines could be tampered with, another objecting to the cost.
The machines were stored in an expansive basement room. Entry to the voting machine storage room, he knew from prior experience, was not by magnetic strip card, but instead by a simple Kulwin brass key, tagged with a label saying ELECTION MACHINES STORAGE. The trick, he realized, was where did the Clerk keep the key? It wasn’t hanging on the office key rack. He didn’t find the key in the desks in the office, as he tried all ten desks, but with no results.
Where would the Clerk keep the key? Not an easy question, with no ready answer. Clearly the key needed to be located, but where was it? Without the key, he knew he was wasting his time.
Then, he remembered where it was. He had previously seen the Clerk upend the BEST DAD EVER coffee mug on his desk, dumping out an assortment of unused pens and pencils, and revealing the key. Sure enough. Mike now had access to the basement election machine storage room. He placed the pens and pencils back in the mug, and headed to the building’s lower level. He would later regret that he had ever found the key.
The key worked, just as he had prayed it would. Inside the storage room he saw what he knew he would find, hundreds of ancient voting machines The machines had originally been manufactured by his former Illinois employer, so he had a passing knowledge as to how they worked. The company kept one of the devices in its front lobby as a memento to its beginnings in the election tabulation business. He had often shown visitors how the voting machine worked, with the voter pulling the curtain closed and then pulling down small levers on the face of the machine over the name of the chosen candidates.
Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the end handle on the closest machine and slowly managed to leverage the heavy machine out so he could get into the back of the machine. In order to avoid the possible loss of the keys to the machines, office policy was to leave the back door key in each machines’ back door lock.
Mike confirmed the serial number he had pulled down on his PC in his office before coming to the storage room on the end plate of the machine. This machine would be used in the upcoming election, based on the serial number. He then moved back in front of the machine and confirmed that the candidate name strips had already been installed, showing the name of the President in position 1A and that of his opponent in position 2A. So far, so good, just as it should be. Maybe this isn’t what I at first thought, he mused, walking around to the back of the machine. He turned the key and dropped down the access door. Inside the machine he could see the metal levers used to rotate individual counting tabulation wheels for each candidate’s position on the machine. Oh my, he thought. That’s not right.
Looking at the many counting devices across the back of the machine, he could see that almost all showed five zeroes on the counter wheel, just as they were supposed to, prior to an election. With some trepidation, he looked to the end counters, for ballot positions 1A and 2A, the positions for the two major parties’ candidates for President of the United States. The counter for position 1A, which was to tabulate votes for the President, showed:
557
Glancing down to 2A, the counter for the President’s Republican opponent, Mike saw:
47
Well, there you have it, he thought - voter fraud. This machine would be moved to its pre-selected location in late October and would then be ready for voting on election day. The first voter would have no idea that he or she was voting on a machine in which the top race had already been decided, at least on this small part of America’s voting grid. Mike looked around the room and mentally calculated what these margins would mean, multiplied by over four hundred machines, assuming they were all similarly pre-voted. But were they?
Mike pulled out two more machines, at random, and quickly confirmed his worst fears. All had been manipulated to give large, varying margins for the incumbent President. He realized that when one added the normal St. Louis voting imbalance for the President’s party, that this would be a vote of historic proportions. The margins from the City would clearly overcome the more rural areas of Missouri, throwing the State’s electors into the President’s column and helping to propel him towards a second term.
&n
bsp; Mike recognized that the only way that the pre-cast votes could be caught before the voting started was by the employees who worked in his office, the very persons who had exclusive access to the machines. The voting machines would be delivered to the various polling locations, and then checked by his fellow election officials to be sure the machines were ready for votes to be cast. The election officials merely had to initial a one page form attesting that the machines bore no votes at the beginning of voting, and were thus ready to vote. No one else would, or could, look at the total vote counter on the machine to confirm a clear machine, with all counters set at zero, before voting started. Classic vote fraud. Right before his eyes.
With a sinking heart, Mike Chapel knew that he would have to go to the media – and, as a consequence, his job would soon be terminated Great, he thought, an economy with increasing unemployment, and I go and get myself fired. Brilliant. He took several pictures with his cell phone of the jiggered voting machines, including serial numbers, locked them back up and replaced each where they had been when he first entered the room. As he left the building, Mike called his brother, a lawyer in St. Louis, who was an officer in the local Republican Party organization.
“Jim….Mike….We need to talk….Not on our cell phones. Meet me at Panera Bread, the one near your house….In a half hour. This is important. No….I can’t tell you now….No….I haven’t been arrested….Not yet….anyway.”
The following Tuesday Mike Chapel held a well-attended media conference arranged by his brother, on the steps of City Hall on Market Street, six blocks south of his election offices. He disclosed his evidence of massive voting fraud planned for the upcoming Presidential election. Missouri media gave lead item/front page coverage to his allegations, which were then carried nationwide. Both national political parties quickly issued statements decrying any fraud, or “attempts to create fraud where none actually exits”, as the White House Press Secretary phrased it. The spark lit at the media event soon led to the ignition of an electoral tinderbox which had apparently just been waiting to burn.
Three days later, Mike Chapel was arrested and charged with various federal crimes, including voter fraud, illegal manipulation of voting devices, interference with a federal election, perjury, unlawful entry to governmental facilities and hate crime defamation of public officials. His brother, Jim Chapel, was arrested for conspiracy to commit the same crimes which his brother was accused of committing. The U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri announced that the Department of Justice would prosecute the case against the Chapels, at the same time releasing video pictures of Mike Chapel entering the St. Louis Election Commissioners office late on the prior Saturday. The DA claimed that the evidence would prove that Mike and Jim Chapel had engineered the vote fraud to help their party’s candidates win the upcoming election.
The City of St. Louis Police Department’s fingerprint section announced to the media that “Mike Chapel’s fingerprints were found on several hundred fraudulent ballots hidden in a storage room at the election offices and on an unspecified number of voting machines and ballot boxes.”
Prior to his arrest Mike had downloaded his cell phone pictures to several conservative websites. The pictures went viral across the country, enraging Republicans, tea party members, conservatives and others, who disbelieved the criminal charges filed, as they had long suspected that the President’s supporters had plans to fix the upcoming November elections, using any means necessary.
FIVE
White House Oval Office
The President was livid, “Does this leaky White House have any control at all over what it tells the media?”
The Vice President was likewise enraged.
Hilde Calhoun was smiling.
Every major media outlet had reported that morning that the nation’s two highest elected officials were to meet in the afternoon at the White House with former First Lady Hilde Ramona Calhoun. The reports also suggested that the purpose of the three way meeting was to discuss Hilde replacing the Vice President on the ticket for the fall Presidential election. Thus, of the three persons in the Oval Office, only one had a reason to smile.
Before going to the White House, Hilde met with Wilbur in his hospital suite. His doctors had given him a clean bill of health the day before, which the media dutifully reported, telling readers and listeners that his medical issue had only been a digestive issue. Upon hearing the news that Wilbur was healthy, and was…well….Wilbur again, The Wife had demanded an immediate meeting with Vivian and the President. To say that The Wife was insistent at the heated meeting that Hilde not be offered the nation’s second highest job would be to state the quite obvious. The President’s somewhat mumbled response was that he had already hinted to Hilde that she was about to be offered the nod when he had called her to invite her to the three way meeting. Neither Vivian nor the First Lady thought that meant anything. The President, they both loudly argued, was still the President, he could change his mind and, lest you forget, they said, Wilbur would be right down the hall, steps from this office. Forget it. Keep Goofy the Veep. The President started to raise the polls. You can win without Hilde, they snapped back. Just send more money to Davey to buy, create and/or steal votes. The President knew he was done, but he was none too happy about it.
Seeing Hilde Calhoun’s insulting smirk the Vice President could contain himself no longer. He jumped up from his seat on the curved couch, his face red and his right index finger pointed directly at his boss. “I only want to know what ever happened to loyalty? Hunh, ol’ buddy? You know….basic ol’ loyalty to your friend? I’ve done everything you ever asked….everything. And now, just to be dumped, without even a….”
“Stop….Stop….You don’t know what I’ve decid….”
Yeah? Don’t try that one on me. I heard it on NPR first thing this morning. On NPR….NPR. Not so much as a phone call from you….NPR.”
“I just tried to tell you that I haven’t decided yet.” Hilde said nothing, but she did lean back a little further on the couch, taking it all in, savoring the moment that would lead to her return to the building she had come to occupy and adore when Wilbur was President. She casually glanced at the gold embroidered curtains in the office, thinking those ugly drapes will be the first thing to go when I finally succeed this man as President.
“Really? Why is Hilde here? Why are there only three of us? I know an et Brute meeting when I attend one. Why didn’t you just….”
“Look. I called Hilde yesterday just to suggest this meeting so we could talk about the number two job. Like a strategy session. You know. No decisions yet. We need polls, we need….”. For the first time, the Vice President’s face began to reveal a slowly spreading smile, as he sat back down, withdrawing his accusatory finger.
Hilde’s head snapped up as she quickly turned from her Oval Office re-decorating mode. Had she heard correctly? “Say what? Wait a minute….We’re just here to have a….What did you call it Mr. President? A strategy session? Hunh? The Vice President has a right to be upset….and so do I, for that matter. You’re either going to keep him on the ticket….or you’re not. I thought you told me yesterday, or at least implied it, that I would get the nod. Polls? You haven’t already polled this? Polls?”
The President was decidedly uncomfortable. He didn’t like what Vivian and The Wife had done to him. He didn’t like being forced to change a decision. He didn’t like anything that reflected on his competency to do the job of running the country, a job he knew inside of himself he didn’t deserve, and that he never should have obtained under normal circumstances. He especially didn’t like being embarrassed in front of Hilde Calhoun, as he knew everything that was said in this meeting would be reported to Wilbur, who would call his twenty best friends in the media, if Wilbur thought it would help Hilde. The President had early on concluded that Wilbur could care less if the leaked reports hurt the occupant of the White House. Wilbur’s public comments implied that the President was a man he l
ooked down on, evidently not thinking he measured up to Wilbur’s performance as President.
“Look, Hilde. I’m under a lot of pressure here….on this….on the campaign….you know….on a lot of election issues….I just can’t snap my fingers and decide….”
“Mr. President, with all due respect.” The President flinched inwardly, knowing that he was about to be shown no respect, as Hilde used the traditional phrase that precedes an attack. The Vice President couldn’t decide if he should be angry or not, as he could tell that Hilde was about to unload on the President, but she might not say things that would be complimentary of either man.
“You are still the President. You get to make the decisions. This place is a sieve as we all know, so the three of us know that the First Lady and her friend down the hall have pounded you to keep the Veep on the ticket, and me off the ticket. That’s fine. He’s your Veep. You picked him. You’re now apparently stuck with him….Sorry, Mr. Vice President….I could have helped the ticket, of course, but if you can’t get it past the palace guard, then you can’t. Too bad. As they say, no sadder words of tongue or pen than the words what might have been. You can undoubtedly win without me on the ticket. Wilbur told me this morning this would probably happen, so I’m not totally surprised, though I am obviously disappointed. We’ll still help you in the campaign this fall. Wilbur wants to give speeches for you, though if I were you I wouldn’t contact him about that for a few days. Let him cool off first….I think it’s time for me to go, and let you two work out your own issues. I appreciate being considered, Mr. President, even if only briefly.” Hilde stood to leave the Oval Office. As she did she gave an over the shoulder glance at the office’s offending curtains. I’ll be back, she thought, just give me some time. Wilbur’ll have a plan.