October 3, 2018 by Duke Chronicle

The Chronicle

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T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2018 DUKECHRONICLE.COM

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 15

BATTLE FOR THE BALLOT

Trustee flushes $330,000 on New group, taxes for toilet professors removal push to get students to the polls

Jeremy Chen | Graphic Design Editor

ICE subpoena may stifle state’s turnout, professor says

By Nathan Luzum Senior Editor

After being accused of removing toilets for tax breaks, a Duke trustee and candidate for Illinois governor found out that he couldn’t flush away his civic duty that easily. Trustee J.B. Pritzker, Trinity ‘87, says he will pay back more than $330,000 of property taxes after an inspector general’s report found that he removed toilets from one of his homes to reclassify the home as uninhabitable. This move enabled him to pay lower taxes on the house, which was classified as a “scheme to defraud,” according to the report. Pritzker has a net worth of $3.2 billion, Forbes reported Tuesday. “The evidence indicates that the use of these affidavits was part of a scheme for obtaining money by means of false representations,” wrote Patrick Blanchard, Cook County inspector general, in the report. The report advised Cook County to recover the money from Pritzker, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Pritzker’s campaign for governor told the Chicago Tribune Tuesday afternoon that he would pay back his tax refunds from the scheme. His wife, M.K. Pritzker, asked a contractor to remove five toilets from the home in 2015 to get a tax break, the report concluded. It also found that M.K. Pritzker’s brother and her personal assistant subsequently made “false representations” to the assessor about the timing of the toilets’ removal and the house’s overall condition. In his gubernatorial race, Pritzker holds more than a 15-point lead over Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner, according to RealClearPolitics. Rauner was not shy in broadcasting his disapproval of Pritzker’s actions, tweeting about the controversy over 12 times since the story broke as of 7:50 p.m. Tuesday. His campaign’s communications director, Will Allison, has also released a statement regarding the incident. “From the very beginning, Pritzker was devising a corrupt scheme to defraud Illinois taxpayers by ripping toilets out of his mansion,” Allison said in the statement. Pritzker released a statement of his own calling for an investigation into Rauner in response to the accusations. See TOILET REMOVAL on Page 3

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons J.B. Pritzker is on Duke’s Board of Trustees.

By Julianna Rennie Contributing Reporter

Selena Qian Staff Graphic Designer

By Alek Kemeny Contributing Reporter

In the 2014 midterm elections, just 17 percent of 18 to 24 year olds cast a ballot, according to the Campus Vote Project—a trend from which Duke students are not immune. In precinct 5, which includes Duke’s Central and West campuses, voter turnout has averaged less than one percent for municipal elections. There’s a lot at stake in North Carolina’s midterm elections Nov. 6. The ballot includes six proposed constitutional amendments, which could create a voter ID requirement for in-person voting and cap the state’s personal and corporate income tax rates. There’s also a North Carolina Supreme Court justice race and 13 U.S. House of Representatives seats up for grabs across the state. Alex Rosenberg, R. Taylor Cole professor of philosophy, promoted voter registration in an unconventional way: giving each of his 90 students a voter registration form and information about eligibility and what’s on the ballot. Rosenberg also offered to mail in students’ completed forms at his own expense if they don’t want to pay for postage. “Voting is not only your duty and easy but allows you to express yourself,” Rosenberg said. He explained that he decided to distribute the voter registration form to his classes because it’s not available online. But Duke students have no excuse not to vote. “University students are so much more welleducated, so much more affluent, and have so much more time on their hands, and all have cars,” he said. “What’s the explanation?” Outside of Rosenberg’s class, student leaders have coordinated since the spring with Duke’s Center for Political Leadership, Innovation and Service (POLIS) to push voting initiatives on campus. The group, called Duke Votes, had its first meeting in September. Historically, voting initiatives on campus have been led by multicultural groups, with each organization hosting their own voter registration drives and educational events. “There are tangible consequences to voting and not voting for our communities,” said junior Corey Pilson, president of Black Men’s Union and chief of staff of Black Student Alliance. “In the civil rights movement, in the women’s movement, you see large voter registration efforts because your voice is in your ballot.” Despite making strong individual campaigns, student leaders had often failed to communicate with each other. And with each presidential cycle and accompanying flurry of voting initiatives, previous student leaders graduated and younger ones took up the mantle of registering, education and mobilizing Duke’s campus. “A lot of the time, it’s like starting from scratch,” said Michelle Li, the president of Asian Students Association. “So instead, with POLIS’s involvement … we’re trying to create some kind of infrastructure so that we’re not starting from scratch and duplicating work every single cycle.” Volunteers who tabled recently on the Bryan Center plaza and in front of Marketplace registered more than 500 people, Li said.

Despite his voter fraud commission’s failure to find evidence of rampant voter fraud, President Donald Trump and his administration’s attempt to crack down on voter fraud has come to North Carolina. On Aug. 31, 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subpoenaed 15 million documents of voting records from the North Carolina State Board of Elections. The North Carolina records office was demanded to give voter registration applications, among other documents, sent from all of North Carolina between Jan. 1, 2010 and August 2018. This came one week after 19 foreign nationals were charged with voting illegally in North Carolina in the 2016 election, which one federal law enforcement official confirmed to CNN was the impetus for the subpoena. ICE declined to comment, saying it could not comment on an “ongoing investigation.” Critics have argued that these few instances of illegal voting are not enough to warrant the demands made in the subpoena. The subpoena is the Trump administration’s latest attempt to crack down on voter fraud, following a nowdismantled voter fraud commission. After an eight-month investigation, the team failed to find evidence of mass voter fraud committed by undocumented immigrants. Shortly after his election, Trump falsely claimed that millions of undocumented immigrants voted illegally, costing him the popular vote. Gunther Peck, associate professor of history and of public policy studies, fears that the Republican push to end so-called “systematic voter fraud” will decrease voter turnout. “There is a genuine fear that by linking voting to ICE, legal citizens might be anxious about Chronicle File Photo voting because ICE has detained and rounded up people that are citizens,” he said. Peck noted that news of the request for records may result in voter intimidation, making people with constitutional guarantees of the right to vote anxious. “It also weakens people’s trust in voting information, making them less likely to register to vote even if they are fully legal,” he said. In response to the subpoena, the state elections board voted unanimously to fight the federal demands at both the state and county levels, where 44 counties were also subpoenaed. Joshua Malcolm, state elections board vice chairman, called the demands “overly broad, unreasonable” and “vague.” “This board will....not stand idly by and consent to any agency attempting to obtain records and documents that violate the principles of overreach by the federal government,” Malcolm said. Additionally, the state election board called for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to delay the deadline of the subpoena. The U.S. Attorney’s Office granted this request, pushing the collection deadline until January 2019. Peck said ICE’s request is unreasonable because the federal government’s request for poll workers to round up 15 million

See STUDENTS on Page 3

See SUBPOENA on Page 3

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