Chicago voters can cast ballots in 12 languages this election. Back home at the diner, we've got one menu and it's laminated, and folks still order the same eggs they've ordered since 1987.

Here's how it shakes out, according to Fox News Digital. Chicago prints ballots in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Tagalog, Polish, Gujarati, Urdu, Ukrainian, Arabic and Russian. Federal law under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires Spanish, Chinese and Hindi in certain precincts. The city election board adds the other languages to match Cook County's ordinance.

Now that's a fair reason. Uniformity. Same as how every booth at the diner gets ketchup, even the booth where nobody's sat since the Bears were good.

Then the numbers came out, and the numbers took their time, like a good pot roast.

In the March primary, according to the Chicago Board of Elections data Fox reported, nine ballots were cast using the English-Gujarati option. Fifteen used English-Urdu. Ten used English-Arabic. Twenty-five each used English-Russian and English-Ukrainian.

Nine. That's not a voting bloc. That's a bowling team with a couple of alternates.

Now I'm not knocking a single one of those nine folks. Good for them. They showed up, which is more than half the city managed. My beef isn't with the voters. It's with the outfit downtown that decided the way to run an election is to print a whole lot of paper and then act surprised that it's hard to keep track of.

Illinois Republican Party chairman Bob Grogan told Fox the extra versions make the system harder for election judges and poll watchers to monitor. He called it "a solution in search of a problem" and "big city virtue signaling." Bob spent 12 years as DuPage County auditor, so he's the kind of fella who counts the sugar packets before he trusts the waitress.

And this is a city that's broke. Chicago's got pension holes you could lose a Buick in. Property tax bills that make a widow on the Southwest Side sit down at the kitchen table, read it twice and reach for the heart pills. Garbage fees, water bills, a sticker for your car that costs more than the car's worth.

But the printing budget? The printing budget's doing just fine.

There's an old saying where I'm from. If you set out 12 pies for the church supper and only one gets eaten, you don't bake 12 more next week. You bake one, and you send the rest of the money back to the folks who paid for the flour.

Chicago, bless it, would hire a consultant to study the pies.

So the city will print its ballots in a dozen languages again, keep every precinct uniform, and make election watchers sort through all of it come Nov. 3. Nine folks in Gujarati, God bless 'em. And millions of taxpayers in the one language everybody in Chicago speaks fluently: the bill.

This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.

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