City's Olympic loss forecast here 3 years ago

It was the most expensive campaign in Chicago history -- $3.3 million per vote.

That's what the city's losing 2016 Olympic bid ended up costing.

Sixty million was spent on the meager 18 votes that Chicago received, knocking it out of the running right at the start.

In Chicago elections, votes have been sold for far less.

Many times over the years, absentee votes were simply dummied up and held in the trunk of a Coupe de Ville. If necessary, the totals were just changed after polling places closed.

Once, in the early 1980s, 80,000 illegal immigrants were registered to vote in Chicago.

The dead frequently cast votes here; 100 votes come from a nursing home where only 24 people live. My favorite was the voter registration form that was perfectly signed by a guy with no arms.

So where was all the election chicanery that has made Chicago famous when it was needed last week in Copenhagen?

I'll bet the Second City's unofficial slogan of "Vote Early and Often" wasn't even whispered into the ears of Olympic delegates.

If Chicago's late Mayor Richard J. Daley had been leading the Copenhagen charge, maybe things would have been different. Daley, who delivered thousands of midnight votes for John F. Kennedy to seal his 1960 election as president, would have tried to insure the Olympic votes were in place before voting started. Chicago representatives might have doled out lifetime supplies of Frango Mints and Chicago pizza or fur coats, Cadillacs and cash if necessary.

Tally da votes. Get da car outa da grahj and let's go home, over by dare.

There was a certain truth behind the joke that has endured for decades:

"The Pope, Richard Nixon and Mayor Daley are in a lifeboat, lost at sea. Unfortunately, they only have enough drinking water for one person. The three of them decide to vote to determine who should get the water. They vote, and Daley wins 6 to 2."

That was then and this is now.

In a column three years ago (Daily Herald, July 31, 2006), I wrote:

"News headline, 2009: 'Chicago Loses Bid to Host Olympics.' Although Chicago would make a dandy site for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, there are three reasons the city will be unsuccessful in its attempt to land the games.

Salt. Lake. City.

That is Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah. You see, in 1995 after that city won the rights to host the 2002 Winter Games, the shocking news came out that International Olympic Committee members had been given a few incentives by local organizers.

The trinkets included rolls of cash, expensive jewelry, dinners at fancy restaurants, vacations, college tuition, plastic surgery and even private striptease shows.

In other words, Salt Lake City had stolen a page from Chicago's Playbook of Clout - before Chicago even was able to use it.

Two top Salt Lake Olympic officials were caught red-handed, having paid more than $1 million to a few dozen members of the International Olympic Committee.

Under the new regulations, board members who make the final host city decision cannot visit candidate cities. Only the committee evaluators may do those visits.

Further, to prevent the kind of private gifting that was rampant in Salt Lake City, evaluation committee members would not be allowed to visit Chicago alone - only as a group.

That might be good news for people trying to get a booth for four at Gibson's on Rush Street while the Olympic committee is here, but it probably spells doom for Chicago wheeler-dealers who are used to cutting deals in more private settings.

The prognosis isn't good for normal Chicago-style commerce when it comes to securing the 2016 Olympics."

And so, the prediction of a bleak outcome was correct.

When Chicago's 18 votes were in, there were no hanging chads and no ACORNS to blame.

It was simply this: the "Hog Butcher for the World," as Carl Sandburg described Chicago in 1916, was hogtied in its pursuit of the 2016 Olympiad.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie.