Voting Time!

And anyone can do it, multiple times, without limit!

• Chicagoans can vote through Sunday to pick a notable Italian to be honored with a statue in Little Italy’s Arrigo Park, where a statue of Christopher Columbus once stood.

  Eight notable Italian Americans are finalists in a little-advertised contest for the honor:

• Amerigo Vespucci, the explorer after whom America is named.
• Antonin Scalia, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice appointed by former President Ronald Reagan.
• Enrico Fermi, the creator of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago.
• Florence Scala, an activist who challenged the construction of the University of Illinois at Chicago in the early 1960s in Little Italy and served at Hull House.
• Maria Montessori, a physician and educator who developed a new way of teaching very young children through play and hands-on activities.
• Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint, who served poor Italian immigrants in Chicago.
• Phillip Mazzei, who aided the American Revolution and is credited with inspiring former President Thomas Jefferson to include the phrase “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence.
• Renato Dulbecco, a virologist who won the Nobel Prize for discovering that some viruses can cause cancer.

No Joe DiMaggio? Frank Sinatra? Tony Accardo? Ah well.

In any event, here's the link to go vote.

And the best part is:

• Officials said only Chicagoans should vote in the contest, and should cast only one ballot. While the online form created on a Microsoft platform asks voters for their name and ZIP code, there is no mechanism to prevent people from outside the city from casting a ballot by creating a false name and picking a random Chicago zip code.

  Park District officials said “submissions are monitored for irregular or duplicate voting patterns.”

In other words, it's EXACTLY like Chicago elections have been for over one hundred years!

Go vote today! Then do it again! And again! And again!