Today, I received a copy of the Dallas City Council agenda addendum for its August 22 meeting. This addendum contains (pp. 11-17) extensive information about a large ($434,495) contract for "the assessment of the City’s current ethics guidelines and the development of an ethics training program." City Ethics was a partner in the losing bid of the Josephson Institute of Ethics.

The second report of the Chicago Ethics Reform Task Force came out this week (see my posts on the first report and on the ordinances passed in response to it).

In this year of endless talk about voter fraud, there is not all that much talk about one area of fraud that has actually been proven to exist, and to make a difference:  absentee ballot fraud. This kind of fraud even comes with its own profession, the absentee ballot broker (boletera in southern Florida).

Boleteras are hired by local campaigns to go into nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and sometimes homes to help people fill out absentee ballots. The question is, how much help do they give? A little help is a good deed, a lot of help is fraud.