Philly Fraud Case Expands
The U.S. Justice Department this past week charged former Democratic congressman Michael Myers with stuffing ballot boxes, bribing an elected official, falsifying records, obstructing justice and voting multiple times in federal elections in Philadelphia.
Myers was the second official charged in the scheme.
Domenick DeMuro, a Democratic ward chairman in that city, admitted in a plea deal that he had “fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear,” ptoecutors said. DeMuro allegedly had a network of clients who paid him significant sums of money to rig elections over several years.
New Jersey mail-in ballot scheme exposed
Four New Jersey residents, including one city council member and one city councilmen-elect in Patterson, N.J., were charged last month in what state officials was a mail-in ballot fraud scheme. The four were charged with multiple crimes including voting fraud, tampering with public records and unauthorized possession of multiple vote-by-mail ballots.
West Virginia mail carrier nabbed in mail-in ballot scheme
A mail carrier in Pendleton County, W.V., recently admitted to investigators that he altered mail-in voting ballot documents. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of West Virginia said in a press release in June that it was charging Thomas Cooper, a worker with the U.S. Postal Service, with “attempted election fraud.”
An affidavit supplied by that office to Just the News states the Pendleton County Clerk received several absentee mail-in ballot requests “in which the voter’s party-ballot request appeared to have been altered by use of a black-ink pen.” On five of the requests, “it appeared that the voters ballot choice was changed from Democrat to Republican.
California voter fraud conviction exposes Skid Row scheme
In February, 62-year-old Norman Hall pled guilty in a scheme to pay money and cigarettes to homeless people on Los Angeles’ Skid Row in exchange for false and forged signatures on ballot petitions and voter registration forms. Hall got a year in jail.
Illinois let non-citizens register to vote in blunder
In January, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White disclosed in a letter to the Legislature that a “programming error” in a signature pad at driver services facilities led to 574 non-U.S. citizens accidentally being registered as voters. At least one, and perhaps as many as 15, non-citizens may have voted in the 2018 election. White’s office says the problem has been fixed.
“We view it as a significant problem,” Matt Dietrich of the Illinois State Board Of Elections said at the time.
Alabama Absentee Fraud
In 2019, former Gordon, Ala., Mayor Elbert Melton was convicted of absentee ballot fraud in a mayoral race he won by just 16 votes.
Melton was sentenced recently to one year in prison and two years of probation after his conviction on charges of absentee ballot fraud and second-degree theft of property.
Pay-to-Vote Scheme exposed in New Jersey
New Jersey real estate developer Frank Raia, 67, a Democrat, was convicted in 2019 of overseeing a scheme to pay low-income residents in Hoboken’s subsidized housing $50 for their votes in the 2013 election.
Wisconsin county supervisor admits to ballot fraud
Former Milwaukee County Supervisor Peggy West, 47, pleaded guilty in 2018 to election fraud for falsifying signatures on petitions to qualify for the spring election.
Prosecutors said several people whose names appear on West’s nomination petition told a detective they never signed. Two even said the printed name next to their bogus signatures were not spelled correctly.
Absentee Ballot Theft in Florida
In 2018, authorities arrested Florida man Bret Warren after they determined he had stolen five absentee ballots and fraudulently voted with them. Warren eventually pled no contest to two charges of false swearing in connection with voting.
Wife of mayoral candidate nabbed in New Mexico
In 2018, New Mexico authorities indicted Laura Seeds on 13 counts of voter fraud related to her husband’s 2016 mayoral race. Seeds was eventually convicted in part for illegally possessing two absentee voter ballots; her husband Robert won the race by two votes.
Indiana cop convicted of voter fraud to help father win race
In 2016, Indiana police officer Lowell Colen was convicted of absentee ballot fraud in an attempt to help his father win a city council election. Colen eventually pled guilty to four felony counts of voter fraud, with prosecutors claiming he filled out false registrations and forged numerous signatures.
Double voting in Arizona
Last month, Randy Allen Jumper pleaded guilty in Arizona to attempting to vote in two states during the 2016 general election: Arizona and Nevada. He was also charged with falsely signing a statement vowing not to vote in the general election anywhere but Arizona.
Arizona officials said at the time of his plea they have brough about 20 cases of voter fraud in the last decade against people who tried to vote in two states in the same election.
1,088 PROVEN INSTANCES OF VOTER FRAUD
949 CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS
48 CIVIL PENALTIES
75 DIVERSION PROGRAMS
8 JUDICIAL FINDINGS
8 OFFICIAL FINDINGS
Only Congress has the constitutional authority to change the date of the federal general election.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, experience shows that we can vote safely in-person as long as election officials implement the safety protocols.
Voters should not be forced to deal with the problems that massive voting by mail would create.
Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to set the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections. Similarly, Article II, Section 1 gives Congress the authority to set the date on which we vote for the slates of presidential electors through the Electoral College.
The date for both congressional and presidential elections has been set by law as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November since 1845.
Congress has never delayed a federal election, even during the Civil War and World War II. Doing so would be a mistake, and it’s clear that isn’t going to happen.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, experience shows that we can vote safely in-person as long as election officials implement the safety protocols recommended by health experts in polling places—the same protocols we are all using when we go to the grocery store or pharmacy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released such guidelines June 22. I voted safely in-person in my town council election recently in Virginia with those types of health precautions in place.
Even during the coronavirus pandemic that has so disrupted our lives, it would be a mistake to go to an all-mail election. Concerns that Trump has raised about mail-in voting are based on documented problems we have seen with such voting.
Mail-in ballots are the ballots most vulnerable to being altered, stolen, or forged. Just look at the current investigation going on in Paterson, New Jersey, over a recent municipal election conducted entirely by mail.
Four Paterson residents have already been charged with criminal election fraud, including a councilman and councilman-elect. Evidence is surfacing of everything from voters reporting that they never received their absentee ballots (even though they are recorded as having voted) to accusations that one of the campaigns may have submitted fraudulent ballots.
Mail-in ballots also have a higher rejection rate than votes cast in person. In the Paterson case, election officials apparently rejected 1 in 5 ballots for everything from signatures on the ballots not matching the signatures of voters on file, to ballots not complying with the technical rules that apply to absentee ballots.
New York, which has taken more than a month to count the ballots from its June 23 primary election, is also reporting a similar rejection rate. This should be considered unacceptable by anyone believing in fair and accurate elections.
Then there is the problem of mail-in ballots being miscarried or not delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. States with recent primaries, including Wisconsin and Maryland, have reported voters not receiving their ballots or not getting them in time to be voted and returned.
In addition, there have been problems with the Postal Service not postmarking ballots, making it impossible for election officials to determine whether the ballots were mailed in time to be counted. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission says that in the last four federal elections, 2.7 million mail-in ballots were misdelivered and 1.3 million were rejected by election officials.
In the 2016 election, almost 130 million Americans voted. Does anyone really think the Postal Service will be able to suddenly handle 260 million pieces of additional mail—that is, the ballots being mailed out by election officials, and then mailed back by voters?
Just from a practical standpoint, that is asking for chaos and mass disenfranchisement.
Inevitably, it will take longer to tabulate the results of the election if there is a massive amount of mail-in voting, particularly in close races for the presidency and down-ballot offices.
The New York Times correctly said back in 2012, “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.”
John Hargrove Seeking Truth and Reality 