Holy Cross Vote

The Holy Cross Vote

Lackawanna is a small city abutting
the Southern boundary of Buffalo, N.Y. The major
industry in the Town, for generations, has been the huge
Lackawanna Steel complex that sits along the shores of
Lake Erie. At one time in the 1960's, 23,000 souls
worked at the steel mill to manufacture the thousands of
tons of steel produced by the facility. Now of course,
the plant is nearly empty, a victim of obsolescent
equipment and the collapse of basic metal mfg.
Industries in the United States during the 70's and 80's.

The black plumes of smoke, erupting
from its basic oxygen furnaces and coke mills when the
place was running at full tilt, could be seen for miles
around. During the evening hours, from the shoreline of
the nearby village of Hamburg, you could see periodic
flashes of fiery brilliance as another heat of molten
steel was poured into its ingot frames. The entire
complex had a medieval visage to it. Its laborers
emerged daily, from the bowels of the plant, covered in
soot, like coal miners. The dust from the belching smoke
stacks lay like a sooty blanket on every exposed surface
nearby.

In odd juxtaposition to this
manufacturing colossus, a few miles up Ridge Road, lies
the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery. Its sprawling and
bucolic acres sit behind the magnificent stone eminence
of the Our Lady of Victory Basilica. Tourists come from
all over the East to enter and admire the Byzantine
beauty of this elegant, white-marble epiphany.

Those of us who lived nearby were
of course inured to both the physical beauty of the
basilica and the economic ugliness of the steel mill.
Both had "been there forever and were as normal to us
as the rising and setting sun.

Inside the cemetery, you could
read the rota of the names on the gravestones. It reads
like a map of Ireland, O'Malley, O'Reilly O'Toole,
Deegan, Dugan and Dunne. These final resting places are
the legacy of a tidal wave of Irish immigrants that had
swept into the nation, from the late 1840's onward,
seeking a better life than that of their impoverished
Isle of Eire.

To those of us involved in the
grand game of politics however, they were a secret
source of "likely and informed voters who could be
trusted to "do the right thing " when called upon by the
local democratic machine.

The use of the "Holy Cross Vote was ingenious.
A contact, on the cemetary staff, provided us with a list of those
voters who were being interred daily. Sure, these fine people had
"done the right thing all of their lives, why not continue the tradition
in the hereafter? We didn't have chads, dimples and other such
foolishness to help us out in those days. If you wanted
to win a contest for sure, you had to do it the old
fashioned way, you had to steal it fair and square!

As each election season
approached, a printed canvass would be mailed out to the
voters to certify their current status and address.
Another contact, within the local board of elections,
would skim the forms of the "Holy Cross Voters " from
the new canvass mailing. The information was then filled
out by one of our local lads. The canvass cards would
then be returned to the Board of Elections certifying
that Mike or Pat, Brigid or Colleen was still among the
faithful and more importantly, ready to vote one more
year for the Democratic lads who were standing for
election. The scam went on for years with and no one
appeared to be the wiser.

Only the odd comment, from
curious election inspectors, marveling at the age and
faithfulness of certain voters, occasionally surfaced.
The proud ward heelers always answered in the
affirmative, detailing how " the faithful came out to
vote when summoned by themselves. "Sure, one said in an
unguarded moment, "our voters are so loyal, they would
even vote from the here after. More discreet companions
gave him a vigorous elbow to the ribs and a murderous
glare that silenced the talker. "Tis' the talk that is
the curse of the Irish, lamented the senior ward
healer. "T'will be the ruin of us one day, he moaned.
He did not know how prophetic his words would come to be.

As Election Day neared,
certain hundreds of "the Holy Cross Vote registered for
absentee ballots, utilizing the information garnered
from the bogus canvass and employing a talented forger
from the local organization. The absentee ballots were
duly filed and lay in wait for the unwary opposition.
Many is the fine lad, that challenged the local machine
and appeared, on occasion, to win a race here and there.
To their great consternation, the apparent victory was
buried, if you will pardon the play on words, by the
late tidal wave of "absentee ballots that were counted
after the election was completed.

Those of us,in the know, always smiled late night on Election Day,
as we watched the results roll in. We knew that the results
didn't mean much until the "Holy Cross Vote was factored in. And we
knew how many of those votes were filed and exactly whom they would
vote for. It was as delicious a system of rigging an election contest as had
ever been devised. We could even extend the process
during larger county and state elections utilizing other
blocs of loyal voters like the "Forest Lawn Vote and
the "Pine Hill Vote, who were also at our clerical beck
and call. Many is the unsuspecting opposition candidate
who complained bitterly about the late wave of
opposition votes that had "buried " their candidacy,
again with all due respect to the irony of the term.We
of course just shrugged and smiled, commenting on
the "faithful and loyal voters who supported our way of
thinking. Our voters are perpetually loyal, we might say
with a hidden smile.

The system worked
well enough for us for several years until one
particular hotly contested election for District
Alderman. As expected, the challenger got buried in
a "late inning landslide of Holy Cross Voters who were
loyal to the machine. The challenger, who had also grown
up in the area, and perhaps had heard whispers of
the "Holy Cross Vote from the loose- lipped rascals in
the club, demanded a recount.

The results of the
recanvass were predictable. A certain Pat or Mike or
Brigid were found to have cast votes when their demise
had occurred several months previous to casting their
ballots. We of course knew nothing. Sure, maybe it was the
stuff of miracles? How else could their registrations be
filed? Maybe the young challenger had mistaken
information? Perhaps the recently bereaved had erred in
filing forms they thought were necessary for their
beloved? It was all an unfortunate misunderstanding, but
nothing of course could be done about it.

In any case, the
attendant hullabaloo resulted in tighter controls for
absentee voters and a closer scrutiny of all things
related to the local election process. We, the party's
elders, sat in the local saloons and watched the
election night returns roll in. We would comment, with a
sad smile, on the "Holy Cross Vote and bemoan its
passing. Sure the lads and lasses would have wanted us
to carry on their traditions, we reasoned. But alas, it
was to be no more.

So, if in conversation on election days, you ever
hear the occasional references to the "Holy Cross Voters,
you can nod your head and smile. Sure, everyone should
have respect for those who were among us and are not now.
You never know when their opinions might weigh in on issues
of the day, even after they have left us for the far beyond.

Joseph Xavier Martin