Washington Favored to Win : Allegations of Fraud Mar Chicago Mayoral Primary

Black incumbent Mayor Harold Washington was favored to beat white challenger Jane M. Byrne Tuesday in a racially divisive Democratic primary battle marred by massive confusion at the polls and a landslide of fraud charges.

Some voters--possibly thousands--were handed the wrong color-coded computer ballots by election judges. That sent supporters of Washington scurrying to court to seek the impoundment of some suspect ballots, extraordinary safeguards for counting others and an extension of polling hours in some precincts.

Voters flocked to the polls in record numbers, and all three network-owned television stations in Chicago said their surveys of voters leaving the polling booths indicated Washington would win the nomination. CBS said Washington would “have a comfortable margin of victory.”

Tally Delay Possible

However, the legal tangles posed by the ballot mess threatened to delay a conclusive tally of the ballots for hours or even days.

Shortly before polls closed at 7 p.m., Cook County Circuit Judge Joseph Schneider ordered the hand inspection of thousands of ballots voted in at least 385 of the city’s 2,900 precincts, and another judge ordered nine precincts in black neighborhoods to stay open an extra two hours because they had opened two hours late in the morning.

In addition, Schneider kept himself and two other judges on indefinite call in the Richard J. Daley building, named after the late Democratic boss whose administration was synonymous with election shenanigans. The judges stayed to handle additional election complaints throughout the night.

Even for a city famed for its rough and tumble politics, the developments were extraordinary. A spokesman for Illinois Atty. Gen. Neil Hartigan said his office had received more complaints of voting irregularities in just the first hour after polls opened than it had all day during last November’s elections. Law enforcement agencies said they were also deluged with reports of double voting, intimidation and vote buying, in addition to the ballot switching problems.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Gareth C. Leviton, an assistant state’s attorney in Cook County who has monitored eight previous mayoral elections. “There’s no way this (ballot counting) is going to be finished tonight.”

Underscores Bitter Struggle

The turmoil underscored the bitter struggle for control of City Hall that has pitted blacks against whites ever since Washington upset Byrne, his predecessor as mayor, in the same primary four years ago. He then went on to win the general election in a fierce contest in which virtually all the city’s blacks voted for Washington and an overwhelming number of whites backed an obscure Republican candidate.

Compounding the confusion in the Democratic race were simultaneous Republican and third party mayoral primaries. Donald Haider, a former Byrne aide recruited by GOP leaders, was the favorite to win the Republican mayoral nomination over three contenders. Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak, the ringleader of white opposition to Washington in the City Council, was running on the Solidarity Party ballot against a write-in candidate. Also on the Democratic ballot was Sheila Jones, a follower of Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.

While he was not listed on Tuesday’s ballot, Cook County Assessor Thomas C. Hynes has also announced he will head another third party ticket in the April 7 general election. A Washington primary victory is expected to force at least two of the other candidates to quit the race to avoid diluting white voting strength against the black incumbent.

Vrdolyak, a vitriolic thorn in Washington’s side for four years, again appeared to be at the heart of Tuesday’s controversy even though the alderman was not on the Democratic ballot. That is because thousands of voters in more than 30 of the city’s 50 wards were handed cream-colored punch cards for his Solidarity Party when they had asked for Democratic cards, which were green. In Illinois, unlike California, voters do not have to be pre-registered with a party to vote in its primary, but can choose their party at the polls.

It was unclear whether the problems were deliberate or accidental. Byrne dismissed them as “a little bit of confusion” that would not affect the outcome, but Washington said they were “a monumental foul-up.”

Suspect Foul Play

Lawyers for the mayor suspected foul play. They said an analysis by Washington’s staff found complaints of erroneous ballot distribution were confined to areas where Washington was expected to do well or at least had a good shot at competing with Byrne.

“It smells,” Judson H. Miner, the Washington administration’s top lawyer, said in an interview. “There’s a pattern. This happened predominantly in the south and west sides (overwhelmingly black, pro-Washington areas) and the lake front (where white liberals gave Washington the majority he needed to win four years ago).”

As complaints poured in, attorneys for Washington, Byrne, Vrdolyak and the city elections board--headed by an old-line Democrat who has frequently feuded with Washington--filed into Schneider’s jam-packed courtroom. Though cameras and tape recorders were barred from proceedings, the arguments of the lawyers were repeatedly interrupted by the ringing of their portable cellular telephones and paging beepers.

Election Judges Confused

‘What happened?” a stern-faced and visibly perturbed Schneider demanded of Mickey Levinson, the election board counsel.

Levinson said election judges were confused because they had never before had to deal with anything other than Democratic or Republican ballots.

Under Schneider’s order, election officials in specified precincts will have to laboriously scan Solidarity ballots to determine whether they were legitimately or erroneously voted. That process would involve matching the position of holes punched in the cards with appropriate slots for Democratic and Solidarity candidates--a time consuming process that could also delay the outcome in several other citywide and aldermanic elections also included on the ballots.

Researcher Wendy Leopold also contributed to this article.