1 in 5 Ballots Rejected as Fraud Is Charged in N.J. Mail-In Election

[DKW 86 7,451]

PLEASE NOTE WHICH FORUM THIS IS IN:

This is why I am having problems believing that carpet bombing elections with mail-in votes is just too easy to screw up.
1) Who gets to select which ones to accept and which to reject?
2) Do you really believe that the Registrar's Office is going to check the signatures of record on every ballot?
3) I could see a Vote by Internet. You could have a PW/Encryption policy that I would think ANYONE would feel safe with. 
4) Maybe we could go to an Internet Based system with Absentee Backup?
Requested absentee ballots, got ZERO PROBLEM WITH THEM. 

Please answer with actual, real thoughts, of your own.

 

 

Quote

 

"What happened in Paterson appears to be different than just the garden variety voter fraud that the GOP claims to fear. The election fiasco was not merely a case of traditional New Jersey political corruption. Rather, Paterson’s mail-in balloting experiment caused a logistical meltdown, with widespread disenfranchisement. Albeit with a heavy enough helping of fraud mixed in.

 

 

 

 

Quote

 

1 in 5 Ballots Rejected as Fraud Is Charged in N.J. Mail-In Election

Following accusations of widespread fraud, voter intimidation, and ballot theft in the May 12 municipal elections in Paterson, N.J., state Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal (pictured) announced Thursday he is charging four men with voter fraud – including the vice president of the City Council and a candidate for that body.

With races still undecided, control of the council hangs in the balance. Paterson is New Jersey’s third largest city and the election will decide the fate of a municipal budget in excess of $300 million, in addition to hundreds of millions more in education spending and state aid.

In the City Council election, 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but only 13,557 votes were counted. More than 3,190 votes, 19% of the total ballots cast, were disqualified by the board of elections. Due to the pandemic, Paterson’s election was done through vote-by-mail. Community organizations, such as the city’s NAACP chapter, are calling for the entire election to be invalidated.

Mail-in ballots have long been acknowledged by voting experts to be more susceptible to fraud and irregularities than in-person voting. This has raised concerns from President Trump and other Republicans about the integrity of national elections in November, which are expected to include a dramatic increase in mail-in ballots. If Paterson is any guide, it ought to concern Democrats as well.

Over 800 ballots in Paterson were invalidated for appearing in mailboxes improperly bundled together – including a one mailbox where hundreds of ballots were in a single packet. The bundles were turned over to law enforcement to investigate potential criminal activity related to the collection of the ballots.

The board of elections disqualified another 2,300 ballots after concluding that the signatures on them did not match the signatures on voter records.

Reporting by NBC further uncovered citizens of Paterson who are listed as having voted, but who told the news outlet they never received a ballot and did not vote. One woman, Ramona Javier, after being shown the list of people on her block who allegedly voted, told the outlet she knew of eight family members and neighbors who were wrongly listed. “We did not receive vote-by-mail ballots and thus we did not vote,” she said. “This is corruption. This is fraud.”

There were multiple reports that large numbers of mail-in ballots were left on the lobby floors of apartment buildings and not delivered to residents’ individual mailboxes, further casting doubt on the integrity of the election.

Two of the election results in Paterson were particularly close. Initially, challenger Shahin Khalique defeated incumbent Mohammed Akhtaruzzaman by 1,729 votes to 1,721. After a second recount on June 19, that race is now tied 1,730-1,730. In that race, a video posted to Snapchat has surfaced that appears to show a man named Abu Razyen unlawfully handling a large stack of ballots he indicates are votes for Khalique. Khalique’s brother, Shelim, and Razyen have been charged by the state attorney general for crimes including fraud in casting mail-in votes, tampering, and unauthorized possession of ballots.

Incumbent council member William McKoy lost by 240 votes to challenger Alex Mendez after a recount on June 1. However, the McKoy-Mendez race is far from over – in the third ward of the city where the race was decided, over 24% of all ballots were disqualified by the Board of Elections. Mendez was also charged Thursday with six different crimes related to voter fraud. (Michael Jackson, Paterson’s incumbent 1^st Ward city councilman and council vice president, was the fourth man charged yesterday. Jackson faces four counts related to voter fraud.)

In a legal complaint, the McKoy campaign is alleging outright fraud on behalf of the Mendez campaign. “At least one individual, YaYa Luis Mendez, has confessed to investigators working on behalf of the [New Jersey attorney general’s] office to having stolen ballots out of mailboxes, both completed and uncompleted, on behalf of and at the direction of the [Alex] Mendez campaign,” according to the complaint prepared by McKoy attorney Scott Salmon.

The attorney for Mendez, who leads in the vote count, isn’t disputing that the election results are unreliable. “This election is a sham, regardless of who are the ultimate victors, and this process has to be reviewed by the courts to address the deficiencies in the planning and execution of the election,” Gregg Paster, the attorney, is quoted as saying in Salmon’s complaint. 

For his part, Paster alleges that the botched election has resulted in problems hurting Mendez’s chance of winning. On June 8, Paster sent a letter asking federal authorities to investigate voter intimidation on behalf of the Paterson’s mayor, Andre Sayegh, and local law enforcement.

Mendez is part of a faction opposing the mayor and hoping to gain control of the City Council and push back against the mayor’s agenda. The ensuing investigations into voting irregularities have resulted in Paterson police officers – including those assigned to the mayor’s private detail, according to Paster – knocking on doors and asking citizens about their votes. The local police department says the cops were assisting the state attorney general investigation into the election, serving as translators for differing Spanish dialects.

“Once you start having city police knocking on doors, investigating voting patterns, you're treading awfully close to the line of banana republic type of tactics,” Paster told RealClearPolitics. “There’s an intimidation factor – you have a lot of immigrants in Paterson, a lot of people that come from places where if the police show up at your door, a lot of times, you know, nobody ever sees you again. And while we're not alleging local cops are anything like that, this is where a lot of these people have come from and they're afraid of the police.”

Salmon admits Paterson’s recent election is “crazy,” but points to unique aspects of living in the town that make mail-in ballot fraud more likely – it’s one of the most densely populated cities in America, with lots of residents living in high-rise buildings that have communal mailboxes that are prime targets for ballot theft.

But as noted in Salmon’s legal complaint, Paterson was just one of 31 municipalities in New Jersey that held vote-by-mail elections on May 12. The average disqualification rate for mail-in ballots in all 31 elections across the state was an alarming 9.6%. (The ballot rejection rate drops to 8.1% if Paterson’s results are excluded.)

New Jersey’s municipal elections aren’t broadly comparable to nationwide elections for a variety of reasons, but the 2016 presidential election resulted in a popular vote total with a differential of just over 2%, with fewer than 80,000 votes in a handful of swing states determining the Electoral College victor. Voting irregularities with mail-in ballots could be much less pronounced than what happened in New Jersey last month and still produce a great deal of uncertainty in a national election.

Salmon is hoping vote-by-mail problems will be resolved in the months before the November election. “In New Jersey, people found out that this is going to be an all-mail-in election only a month before, whereas obviously November is still a ways away and there's a lot more time to educate voters on how to fill out these ballots and how to return them,” he told RCP. But he concedes that it’s “still a fair point” to look at New Jersey’s elections last month and see cause for concern about the national elections.

Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, acknowledged on the Election Law Blog last month that there’s “genuine absentee ballot fraud scandal going on in Paterson, New Jersey and it is going to get a lot of national attention.” Hasen argues that it’s not cause for concern, however, noting there were only 491 prosecutions related to absentee ballots nationwide between 2000 and 2012.

“The rise in vote by mail should lead to increased vigilance against this sort of activity,” he wrote on May 20. “But the push to expand vote by mail is worth it given the great health benefits of increased voting by mail during a pandemic, the small risk of fraud, and the likelihood that fraud will get caught.”

Despite Hasen’s sanguine attitude, the problems in Paterson have received virtually no national attention so far. Salmon and Paster say they’ve had inquiries from only two national news outlets, and almost all coverage of the problems and fraud allegations in Paterson have been confined to local news outlets.

At the same time, dozens of lawsuits have been filed across the country contesting state requirements used to certify mail-in ballots. “Among the main targets are witness and signature requirements for absentee ballots -- such as signing the envelope, or getting a witness or notary to sign it, or making sure the voter's signature is legible,” notes an NPR report earlier this month.

Those lawsuits seeking to expand vote-by-mail include one brought in Nevada earlier year, which aims to do away with signature verification on mail-in ballots altogether – even though ballot signatures not matching voter records was the reason Paterson disqualified over 2,300 ballots.

Meanwhile, the president continues to be an outspoken opponent of voting by mail. He tweeted on June 22, “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” This and other Trump claims about vote-by-mail problems are frequently contested by the press.

“We've literally been expecting Trump to tweet about this for the last two weeks,” says Salmon. “Within the McCoy campaign, there have been ongoing jokes about how long it's going to take for Trump to find out about Paterson and start tweeting.”

Mark Hemingway is a writer in Alexandria, Va. You can follow him on twitter @heminator.

 

 

[aubiefifty 16,930]

funny how meds and checks are often sent by mail with few problems. what disturbs me most is the six hundred thousand voters in texas had one polling place to vote for because of being rigged by republicans so they can still win an election. i thought one of the greatest rights of this country was that of voting but some pols who claim to be fiercely patriotic would refuse them the right to vote. hell it played for two days on msnbc. people that do that sort of thing should be in prison.......a real one.

[DKW 86 7,451]

42 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

funny how meds and checks are often sent by mail with few problems. what disturbs me most is the six hundred thousand voters in texas had one polling place to vote for because of being rigged by republicans so they can still win an election. i thought one of the greatest rights of this country was that of voting but some pols who claim to be fiercely patriotic would refuse them the right to vote. hell it played for two days on msnbc. people that do that sort of thing should be in prison.......a real one.

That is really another, VERY PERTINENT POINT. Polling Place restrictions are an abomination and are straight up wrong, probably racist, and genuine disenfranchisement. If we allowed high tech encryption etc, we should be able to eliminate almost all voter fraud, site restriction issues, and COVID19 issues too. Have some polling places open for the stubborn traditionalists. And Absentee Ballots for the tech-phobic.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

I think it's a pretty simple solution.  Put a unique barcode on each mail-in ballot.  Then have the voter send back in or drop off at a secure drive thru location.

[I_M4_AU 8,012]

1 hour ago, Brad_ATX said:

I think it's a pretty simple solution.  Put a unique barcode on each mail-in ballot.  Then have the voter send back in or drop off at a secure drive thru location.

That solution would be good, but there are states that don’t want the votes to be tied down that tight (see NC in 2018).  Also, see the arguments about voter ID.  As you mentioned earlier, each state has it’s own way of handling the vote and some of them seem to want things loose for what ever reason.

[homersapien 11,461]

5 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

I think it's a pretty simple solution.  Put a unique barcode on each mail-in ballot.  Then have the voter send back in or drop off at a secure drive thru location.

Which is exactly what Oregon does, and it's working just fine.

[bootskii 264]

On 6/28/2020 at 7:32 AM, DKW 86 said:

PLEASE NOTE WHICH FORUM THIS IS IN:

This is why I am having problems believing that carpet bombing elections with mail-in votes is just too easy to screw up.
1) Who gets to select which ones to accept and which to reject?
2) Do you really believe that the Registrar's Office is going to check the signatures of record on every ballot?
3) I could see a Vote by Internet. You could have a PW/Encryption policy that I would think ANYONE would feel safe with. 
4) Maybe we could go to an Internet Based system with Absentee Backup?
Requested absentee ballots, got ZERO PROBLEM WITH THEM. 

Please answer with actual, real thoughts, of your own.

 

 

 

 

 

I agree with you thinking outside the box to resolve the issue but I can tell you right now people will still find this discriminatory. They will say not everyone owns or has access to a computer or smartphone.. Just look at how people view getting an id to vote as discriminatory. Even though you need an id just for about everything now a days ie: buyin alcohol, getting on a plane, writing a check, getting certain prescriptions, etc....   I swear sometimes I feel the answers are right in front of us but we are to stupid and ignorant to see them... 

 

[DKW 86 7,451]

On 6/29/2020 at 8:05 AM, Brad_ATX said:

I think it's a pretty simple solution.  Put a unique barcode on each mail-in ballot.  Then have the voter send back in or drop off at a secure drive thru location.

You know they did this NJ, right? With a 20% fraud rate?

How does a barcode discriminate on who fills it out? You are tracking it one way, FROM the Registrar's Office.
How do you track it back? How do you verify that Omalola Ojewole on Cherry Street in the 5th Congressional District filled it out? and how do you know WHO mailed it back? 

No one addressed WHO picks out the ones counted and not counted? The Party Affiliated Elected Registrar? This is what happened in NJ.
Who verifies the signatures on 63M ballots?
How do we know that they are honorable?

  

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

You know they did this NJ, right? With a 20% fraud rate?

How does a barcode discriminate on who fills it out? You are tracking it one way, FROM the Registrar's Office.
How do you track it back? How do you verify that Omalola Ojewole on Cherry Street in the 5th Congressional District filled it out? and how do you know WHO mailed it back? 

No one addressed WHO picks out the ones counted and not counted? The Party Affiliated Elected Registrar? This is what happened in NJ.
Who verifies the signatures on 63M ballots?
How do we know that they are honorable?

  

So certainly there can be issues, however this seems more like an anomaly than the norm based on what we've seen nationally.  Too many examples of places that vote by mail and haven't had issues to ignore as well.

[DKW 86 7,451]

On 6/30/2020 at 7:15 PM, Brad_ATX said:

So certainly there can be issues, however this seems more like an anomaly than the norm based on what we've seen nationally.  Too many examples of places that vote by mail and haven't had issues to ignore as well.

Brad, I agree with you, but as we saw in NJ, lets find some answers. 

I still think a Nationalized Voter Base, on the internet, Should/Could be the largest part of this.
Social Distancing
Lowered Costs Long Term Versus Mail-In and Counting Ballots.
Absentees ballots are fine. They dont usually overwhelm the system in place.
Lets not waste time and go to where we all know we will be one day.

[bigbird 60,580]

Vote by video. Each registered voter gets unique ID activated by fingerprint or retinal scan. Send video to a central organization and run facial recognition to limit/eliminate those trying to compromise the vote. Close matches get processed with more scrutiny to protect dopplegangers. Just a thought.

[I_M4_AU 8,012]

3 hours ago, bigbird said:

Vote by video. Each registered voter gets unique ID activated by fingerprint or retinal scan. Send video to a central organization and run facial recognition to limit/eliminate those trying to compromise the vote. Close matches get processed with more scrutiny to protect dopplegangers. Just a thought.

The Democrats would not go for voter ID as it would restrict minorities from voting and therefore be disenfranchised. The Republicans would not like the invasion of privacy by fingerprinting or scanning retinals of everybody. Too much government control for them.  It is such a political football.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

There go those damn Democrats again trying to screw with elections via mail fraud.  Oh wait, it was a Republican?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/10/west-virginia-mail-carrier-guilty-election-fraud-altered-ballot-requests/5412010002/

[I_M4_AU 8,012]

51 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

There go those damn Democrats again trying to screw with elections via mail fraud.  Oh wait, it was a Republican?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/10/west-virginia-mail-carrier-guilty-election-fraud-altered-ballot-requests/5412010002/

It doesn’t matter which party is screwing with the elections by committing voter fraud, it’s the ease that it can happen.

[savorytiger 182]

On 7/10/2020 at 9:57 AM, I_M4_AU said:

It doesn’t matter which party is screwing with the elections by committing voter fraud, it’s the ease that it can happen.

I think it's hard to deny there's going to be additional risks in voter fraud. I'm just not sure there's a better way of doing it in a pandemic. Online voting is extremely difficult if not impossible to do securely. If you think there are issues with voting by mail, imagine what happens when millions of technically challenged people all try to access one server. 

[DKW 86 7,451]

If we can queue up in Home Depot, we can queue up at the Voting Booth.

We just need to proceed with a nationwide voter registered Internet Voting plan.

[I_M4_AU 8,012]

6 hours ago, savorytiger said:

I think it's hard to deny there's going to be additional risks in voter fraud. I'm just not sure there's a better way of doing it in a pandemic. Online voting is extremely difficult if not impossible to do securely. If you think there are issues with voting by mail, imagine what happens when millions of technically challenged people all try to access one server. 

The pandemic is being used as an excuse to fix something that isn’t broken, it does need revision to keep up with technology.  However, NOT at this time, NOT during a Presidential election.  Wait for a mid-term to put in changes. If the American public can go to the grocery store, hardware store, protest inequality, they can surely vote in person.

[SLAG-91 1,483]

 

I'm still getting mail addressed to the previous occupants of our house. Are mail-in ballots requested, or just sent automatically to registered voters? I absolutely do not trust the ability of the USPS to get ballots by mail to people correctly. Think about the number of deceased people who got stimulus checks from the government...how many people who pass away in the next few months leading up to November would still get ballots mailed to them? If someone early votes and gets a ballot mailed to them, are there going to be mechanisms in place to catch potential duplicate voting? I ask rhetorically, but these are some things that give me pause with voting by mail.

When I've gotten a jury summons in the past, there is no proof that I received it...ours are not sent via certified mail. Are/would mailed ballots be given any special consideration? 

My thoughts: I would rather see extended hours and days for early voting and day of voting...I am talking grocery store hours like 5 A.M. to 11 P.M., 7 days a week for two weeks prior to the main election Tuesday.

Get voting officials to work in shifts, increase the number of locations to to limit the traffic (with the caveat that you vote at your designated location only), invest in good machines that also provide paper receipts, whatever it takes to make the in-person process easier for everyone. I'd rather see investment in processes that better ensure that votes are legitimate AND provides ample opportunity for people to go vote.

[savorytiger 182]

5 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

The pandemic is being used as an excuse to fix something that isn’t broken, it does need revision to keep up with technology.  However, NOT at this time, NOT during a Presidential election.  Wait for a mid-term to put in changes. If the American public can go to the grocery store, hardware store, protest inequality, they can surely vote in person.

I'm not asking for permanent changes, I'm asking for measures to deal with the pandemic now. I might be overly pessimistic about the state of the country in 4 months, but the last 4 has not given me much hope. We'll see in a month if people actually take this "new wave" (not that we really got past the last one) more seriously. Texas is off to a terrible start by not requiring masks for voting today.

And sorry, the "going to the store" comparison is silly. How many people need to wait hours and hours to get into the store as we've seen in the primary elections that's happened so far during the pandemic? How many stores hold all their items in one small room that everyone has to go through? 

I do like @SLAG-91's suggestion of extending the voting window, and would support it to be a permanent fixture going forward. The main issue is that small enclosed spaces are very prone spreading the infection, and voting booths would need to be cleaned regularly. Provide/require masks and enforce using hand sanitizer as people go in. Hope everyone who does actually takes it seriously. It might be a good enough compromise between health risk and election risk. 

EDIT: As for issues dealing with mail in ballots, how do we currently deal with them for absentee ballots? Is it not just a scaling issue?

[bigbird 60,580]

Meh...what's 20% gonna do any way

[TexasTiger 13,053]

16 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

The pandemic is being used as an excuse to fix something that isn’t broken, it does need revision to keep up with technology.  However, NOT at this time, NOT during a Presidential election.  Wait for a mid-term to put in changes. If the American public can go to the grocery store, hardware store, protest inequality, they can surely vote in person.

I use curbside or delivery — even for protests. Can I just use the drive thru to vote?

[I_M4_AU 8,012]

20 hours ago, savorytiger said:

I'm not asking for permanent changes, I'm asking for measures to deal with the pandemic now. I might be overly pessimistic about the state of the country in 4 months, but the last 4 has not given me much hope. We'll see in a month if people actually take this "new wave" (not that we really got past the last one) more seriously. Texas is off to a terrible start by not requiring masks for voting today.

And sorry, the "going to the store" comparison is silly. How many people need to wait hours and hours to get into the store as we've seen in the primary elections that's happened so far during the pandemic? How many stores hold all their items in one small room that everyone has to go through? 

I do like @SLAG-91's suggestion of extending the voting window, and would support it to be a permanent fixture going forward. The main issue is that small enclosed spaces are very prone spreading the infection, and voting booths would need to be cleaned regularly. Provide/require masks and enforce using hand sanitizer as people go in. Hope everyone who does actually takes it seriously. It might be a good enough compromise between health risk and election risk. 

EDIT: As for issues dealing with mail in ballots, how do we currently deal with them for absentee ballots? Is it not just a scaling issue?

If we go to vote in person I would expect extreme mitigation measures to be in place.  After all, when I have voted in the past most of the volunteers in the polling place are seniors citizens.  I would suggest you apply for an absentee ballot to alleviate your fears.  The difference is that you request the absentee ballot and the state sends it to you while vote by mail the state sends the ballot to the registered voter at the address on record (which may or may not be accurate).  I’m sure you can see the potential for fraud in this type of voting process.

If you don’t like the *going to the store* comparison; how about the *protesting inequalities* comparison?  After all, several officials have told us that they were exempt from massive crowds because they were expressing their 1st Amendments rights to peaceably assemble.  Won’t the right to vote be just as essential?

Countries that have switched over to a democracy have risked life and limb to vote in elections.  I do wonder what they think of our concern over a virus that at least 97% of the infected survive?

If our country wasn’t so in love with litigation, this would be a non-event.

Protect yourself when you go about your life and stop living in fear, JMO.

 

[homersapien 11,461]

39 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

 

If you don’t like the *going to the store* comparison; how about the *protesting inequalities* comparison?  After all, several officials have told us that they were exempt from massive crowds because they were expressing their 1st Amendments rights to peaceably assemble.  Won’t the right to vote be just as essential?

 

 

The logical fallacy in that comparison is there is a perfectly acceptable alternative to voting in person, while there is no alternative to personal involvement in a protest.

[I_M4_AU 8,012]

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

The logical fallacy in that comparison is there is a perfectly acceptable alternative to voting in person, while there is no alternative to personal involvement in a protest.

Would the protest still be a protest if you do it on ZOOM and broadcast it on big TV’s at the Police Precinct or where George Floyd died?  Would that not be personal involvement in a protest?

[homersapien 11,461]

5 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

Would the protest still be a protest if you do it on ZOOM and broadcast it on big TV’s at the Police Precinct or where George Floyd died?  Would that not be personal involvement in a protest?

Of course not.