Vote Fraud

More Jersey Democrats Caught Committing Voter Fraud with Mail-In-Ballots
By Shore News Network, Posted on June 25, 2020



PATERSON, NJ –   Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal today announced voting fraud charges against Paterson City Councilman Michael Jackson, Councilman-Elect Alex Mendez, and two other men in connection with the May 12, 2020 special election in the City of Paterson.

All four men are charged with criminal conduct involving mail-in ballots during the election.  The investigation by the Attorney General’s Office of Public Integrity & Accountability (OPIA) began when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service alerted the Attorney General’s Office that hundreds of mail-in ballots were found in a mailbox in Paterson.  Numerous additional ballots were found in a mailbox in nearby Haledon.  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all voting in May 12 elections in New Jersey was done by mail-in ballots.

“Today’s charges send a clear message: if you try to tamper with an election in New Jersey, we will find you and we will hold you accountable,” said Attorney General Grewal. “We will not allow a small number of criminals to undermine the public’s confidence in our democratic process.”

“The residents of New Jersey have a right to free and fair elections, and we will ensure that happens,” said OPIA Director Thomas Eicher. “Our office’s criminal investigations complement a number of other safeguards that New Jersey has implemented to ensure the integrity of our elections.”

As described below, a number of today’s charges relate to the improper collection of mail-in ballots. Generally speaking, a voter who receives a mail-in ballot completes the ballot themselves and then returns the ballot by mailing it, placing it in a specially designated “drop box,” or delivering it to the County Board of Elections. However, New Jersey also allows a voter to provide the completed ballot to a “bearer,” who must complete the bearer certification on the ballot envelope in the presence of the voter and then return the ballot on behalf of the voter.  Under state law, a bearer may collect and deliver ballots for no more than three voters in an election, and a candidate in the election is never permitted to serve as a bearer.

The following four defendants were charged today by complaint-summons as indicated:

Michael Jackson, 48, of Paterson—1st Ward Councilman and Council Vice President

Fraud in Casting Mail-In Vote (3rd Degree)
Unauthorized Possession of Ballots (3rd Degree)
Tampering with Public Records (3rd Degree)
Falsifying or Tampering with Records (4th Degree)

It is alleged that Jackson violated state election laws as a candidate by approaching one or more voters in Paterson in the district where he was running and collecting their official mail-in ballots for delivery to the Passaic County Board of Elections.  It is further alleged that these mail-in ballots were delivered to the Board of Elections without information identifying the bearer, in violation of state election laws.  

In addition, Jackson allegedly procured and had in his possession more than three official mail-in ballots which were neither his own ballots, nor ballots for which he was identified as an authorized bearer.  Lastly, Jackson allegedly received the official mail-in ballot of one voter without the ballot having been voted or sealed, and that ballot was subsequently delivered to the Board of Elections in a sealed envelope without information identifying the bearer.

Alex Mendez, 45, of Paterson—3rd Ward Councilman-Elect

Election Fraud (2nd Degree)
Fraud in Casting Mail-In Vote (3rd Degree)
Unauthorized Possession of Ballots (3rd Degree)
False Registration or Transfer (Third-Degree)
Tampering with Public Records (3rd Degree)
Falsifying or Tampering with Records (4th Degree)

It is alleged that Mendez violated state election laws as a candidate by approaching one or more voters in Paterson in the district where he was running and collecting their official mail-in ballots for delivery to the Passaic County Board of Elections.  It is further alleged that these mail-in ballots were delivered to the Board of Elections without information identifying the bearer in violation of state election laws.

In addition, Mendez allegedly procured or submitted one or more voter registration applications, which he knew to be false, fictitious, or fraudulent, in that he knew the person for whom the application was procured was not eligible to vote in the election district identified on the application.

Shelim Khalique, 51, of Wayne, N.J.

Fraud in Casting Mail-In Vote (3rd Degree)
Unauthorized Possession of Ballots (3rd Degree)
Tampering with Public Records (3rd Degree)
Falsifying or Tampering with Records (4th Degree)

Khalique allegedly violated state election laws by approaching a residence in Paterson’s 2nd Ward and collecting official mail in ballots from one or more voters which subsequently were delivered to the Passaic County Board of Elections without information identifying the bearer.

In addition, Khalique and the bus company he owns, A-1 Elegant Tours, Inc., d/b/a Eastern Star Transportation, LLC, were charged today with contract fraud and other crimes in a separate investigation by OPIA, the New Jersey State Police, Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, and Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office.

Abu Razyen, 21, of Prospect Park, N.J.

Fraud in Casting Mail-In Vote (3rd Degree)
Unauthorized Possession of Ballots (3rd Degree)

It is alleged that Razyen violated state election laws by procuring and possessing more than three official mail-in ballots which were not his own and for which he was not identified as an authorized bearer.  Investigators obtained a USB drive containing a video of Razyen holding and flipping through a stack of more than three official mail-in ballot outer envelopes that did not have the bearer portion completed.  The video confirmed that Razyen had collected the mail-in ballots.

The charges are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Second-degree crimes carry a sentence of five to 10 years in state prison and a fine of up to $150,000, while third-degree crimes carry a sentence of three to five years in prison and fine of up to $15,000. Fourth-degree crimes carry a sentence of up to 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The investigation was conducted by prosecutors and detectives in the OPIA Corruption Bureau, under the leadership of OPIA Director Thomas Eicher.  Deputy Attorney General Eric C. Cohen is prosecuting the case, under the supervision of Corruption Bureau Chief Peter Lee and Counsel to the Director Anthony Picione.

Attorney General Grewal created OPIA in September 2018 to combat corruption and strengthen public confidence in government institutions.  In December 2019, the Attorney General issued a directive codifying OPIA and making it a permanent part of the Attorney General’s Office.  That directive established the OPIA Corruption Bureau as the lead office within the Department of Law & Public Safety for the investigation and prosecution of state criminal violations involving corruption and abuse of public trust.

OPIA has a toll-free Tipline 1-844-OPIA-TIPS for the public to report corruption.  The Attorney General’s Office has an Anti-Corruption Reward Program that offers a reward of up to $25,000 for tips leading to a conviction for a crime involving public corruption. Information is posted at: http://nj.gov/oag/corruption/reward.html.

The Wise And Powerful wrote:

Notice the section where he talks about Casa De Maryland and how it's a perez baby.. guess who strongly supported it.. BARBARA BUSH.

those bushs were fucking scum

US Postal Worker Seen Tossing Campaign Mailers Into Dumpster; And We Should Trust Them With Ballots?
Posted at 1:30 pm on June 28, 2020 by Elizabeth Vaughn

Ft. Bend County (Texas) Sheriff and Republican candidate for Congress Troy Nehls received a phone call from people who heard a noise and saw a U.S. postal worker walking away from a dumpster. The postal worker drove away. When the people looked into the dumpster, they saw a stack of Nehls’ campaign mailers on top.

I am not a lawyer, but if I recall correctly, tampering with the mail is a federal crime.

A large photo of a person in a jail cell is shown on the U.S. Post Office’s website, with the caption, “Tampering with mail will get you a new home, new friends and a new job.”

Interfering with an election is also a crime (18 U.S. Code § 595. Interference by administrative employees of Federal, State, or Territorial Governments).

Over and above tampering with the mail and interfering with an election is the statement this makes about mail-in voting. This video of a postal worker taking it upon himself or herself to throw the campaign material of a candidate they oppose into a dumpster just reinforces the case against it. Mail-in voting provides tremendous leeway for fraud. What if this individual had tossed a stack of ballots into the dumpster rather than campaign material? And what if this particular election had been close? A postal worker could, in effect, decide an election.

Democrats have used the current COVID crisis to push for mail-in voting. They do so knowing the opportunity it provides to influence the vote. Never forget the phrase commonly associated with the left, “by any means necessary.”

Full story at https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/06/28/heres-why-people-are-skeptical-of-mail-in-voting/

Report: Many Americans say it would be 'inappropriate' for either party to dispute the election
Rebecca Morin, USA TODAY • June 29, 2020

WASHINGTON – A majority of Americans say they would find it inappropriate if the November election's outcome was disputed in a variety of ways, with a small group saying violence would be justified if their preferred party lost, according to a new report.

About two-thirds of Americans (67%) believe it would be inappropriate if President Donald Trump loses but refuses to leave office because he claims he has credible evidence of illegal voting. The findings are part of a new report entitled “Democracy Maybe: Attitudes on Authoritarianism in America” from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group.

When broken down along partisan lines, majorities of Republicans (56%), Democrats (81%) and independents (53%) believe Trump refusing to leave office would be inappropriate. But almost three out of 10 Republicans (29%) say it would be appropriate for Trump to refuse to leave office if he claimed to have credible evidence of illegal voting.

Over the past several weeks, the president has claimed without evidence that the election is rigged, specifically taking aim at the many states looking to expand mail-in voting due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many experts have disputed Trump’s claim.

There is also concern over election tampering. Intelligence officials have said Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and there are concerns of interference again in November.

In a scenario where the Democratic nominee calls for a do-over election while claiming to have credible evidence of interference by a foreign government, slightly fewer than half of all Americans (45%) say that would be inappropriate.

'Nonsense': Election experts reject Trump's claim that foreign countries could counterfeit millions of mail-in ballots

The partisan split is much more pronounced on this question, with Republicans overwhelmingly (69%) saying this scenario would be inappropriate compared with 27% of Democrats. And nearly 4 in 10 (38%) Democrats say it would be appropriate to call for a re-do if there were claims that the nominee had credible evidence of foreign interference.

“A substantial portion of the public appears to be quite open to invalidating the results of the 2020 election, if their side loses,” said Joe Goldman, a co-author of the report. “And a worrying minority says that political violence would be justified if the other side wins the White House.”

Larry Diamond, co-author of the report, also warned that if there is a disputed election, foreign disinformation will likely try to drive violence among the American public.

“It's going to be a petri dish for bots and trolls to intensify American anger, fear, rumor mongering, and so on,” Diamond said.

Violence after losing?

A small minority of both Republicans and Democrats also said they would turn to violence if their respective party does not win.

Among Democrats, 13% say that a little or moderate amount of violence is justified if the Republican wins the 2020 election. Another 9% of Democrats say that violence is justified a lot or a great deal. For Republicans, 11% say that a little or moderate amount of violence is justified if the Democrat wins, with an addition 10% say that a lot or great deal of violence is justified.

For both parties, that is nearly 1 out of every 4 people.

Although more than 7 in 10 Democrats and Republicans believe violence isn’t justified at all, the small percentage of respondents do represent millions of Americans.

“Even if you assume that it is just a fraction in a country of hundreds of millions of people, that's still a sizable amount,” Goldman said. He warned that the internet could cultivate more violence as “everybody is operating in an environment of viralness and disinformation and often in an environment of echo chambers, in which those who share a point of view about violence can connect with one another.”

Despite a number of Americans who say they could dispute the elections, a large majority of Americans still say that a democratic political system is a good way to govern.

And more than half of Americans (58%) say it would be inappropriate for a candidate to call for a do-over election because they won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College. A large majority of Republicans (78%) would find it inappropriate compared to the 47% of Democrats.

The findings of the report are based upon the December 2019 VOTER Survey from the group, which was conducted in partnership with YouGov. In total, 5,900 adults were surveyed between Nov. 22, 2019 and Dec. 23, 2019.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Election 2020

There is only one safe and sensible way to handle this.
Trump stays in office until such time that all *qualified people can go vote.

1 in 5 Ballots Rejected as Fraud Is Charged in N.J. Mail-In Election
By Mark Hemingway /Camden Courier-Post via AP, June 26, 2020

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 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 1st 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.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/04/21/15-election-results-that-were-thrown-out-because-of-fraudulent-mail-in-ballots/

15 Election Results That Were Thrown Out Because of Fraudulent Mail-In Ballots
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https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/postal-worker-dumps-gop-mailers-in-dumpster-caught-on-video/

A US Postal worker was just caught on video throwing a stack of my campaign mailers in a dumpster. Some patriots nearby heard a noise when she tossed them in & went to investigate. They found a stack of them and called me. No wonder people are skeptical of mail in voting.

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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/26/1_in_5_ballots_rejected_as_fraud_is_charged_in_nj_mail-in_election_143551.html

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

Dead Cat Gets Voter Registration Form in the Mail; Cat’s Political Affiliation Unknown

The legendary #VoteFraud machine of the #Democrats is in full swing. The dead cat bounce as applied to elections? Welcome to America! Dead people vote a lot but voting rights have been extended to dead animals.

Breitbart:

"Speaking of “the dead,” as Fox5 in Atlanta reported on Thursday that when Atlanta resident Ron Tims checked his mail on Wednesday, he found an envelope addressed to Cody Tims. Cody doesn’t get much mail. Even for a dead cat. He died 12 years ago.

The family keeps his ashes in a green container."

https://www.redstate.com/mike_miller/2020/07/10/dead-cat-gets-voter-registration-form-in-the-mail-cats-political-affiliation-unknown/

California tosses 100,000 botched mailed-in ballots for presidential primary
Most of the discounted votes arrived late, while others were lacking signatures.
July 14, 2020, 5:54 AM MDT / Updated July 14, 2020, 5:59 AM MDT
By Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — More than 100,000 mail-in ballots were rejected by California election officials during the March presidential primary, according to data obtained by The Associated Press that highlights a glaring gap in the state’s effort to ensure every vote is counted.

With the coronavirus pandemic raging, California is part of a growing number of states increasing mail-in balloting to avoid crowds at polling places. President Donald Trump is among those questioning the integrity of vote-by-mail elections while supporters say they are just as reliable as polling places and offer greater flexibility for voters.

But while polling places include workers who can assist people who have questions about filling out ballots, a voter doesn’t have support at home and so problems can arise.

The California secretary of state’s election data obtained by the AP showed 102,428 mail-in ballots were disqualified in the state’s 58 counties, about 1.5% of the nearly 7 million mail-in ballots returned. That percentage is the highest in a primary since 2014, and the overall number is the highest in a statewide election since 2010.

Two years ago, the national average of rejected mail ballots in the general election was about 1.4% and in the 2016 presidential election year it was 1%, according to a U.S. Election Assistance Commission study.

The most common problem, by far, in California was missing the deadline for the ballot to be mailed and arrive. To count in the election, ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received within three days afterward. Statewide, 70,330 ballots missed those marks.

Another 27,525 either didn’t have a signature, or the signature didn’t match the one on record for the voter.

Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation that seeks to improve elections, called the uncounted figure discouraging.

“The only thing worse than people not voting is people attempting to vote and having their ballot uncounted,” she said. The tally of nullified votes “can make a difference in a close contest.”

The data didn’t break down the uncounted ballots by party registration. While the overall number was large in March, if it’s the same in November it’s unlikely to affect the presidential race — Trump lost to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 4.3 million votes.

But there are expected to be at least several tightly contested U.S. House races where a relatively few votes could tip the balance. In 2018, Democrat TJ Cox upset Republican David Valadao by less than 1,000 votes in a Central Valley district. They have a rematch in November.

Local races sometimes are decided by a handful of votes.

California traditionally has offered mail-in voting only to those who request ballots. Over time the number has grown to represent more than half of all cast ballots. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in June signed a law requiring county election officials to mail a ballot to all the state’s nearly 21 million registered voters for the November election.

He called mail-in voting safe and secure, pointing to a series of studies that found no evidence of significant fraud. States across the political spectrum rely solely on mail ballots, including Colorado, Utah and Washington.

In preparation for November, the state is launching a ballot-tracking tool that will quickly alert voters if they need to take action, such as adding a missing signature. Another change: The state is extending the window for mail ballots to arrive to 17 days after Election Day.

Even though he voted by mail this year, Trump has called mail-in voting “a terrible thing” prone to abuse, warning without evidence that “you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody’s living room, signing ballots all over the place.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic prompting many states to pursue near-universal mail voting to minimize health risks that come with indoor crowds, national Republicans and Democrats have argued over the safety and security of votes traveling through the U.S. Postal Service.

Washington’s Republican Secretary of State, Kim Wyman, is among those who see it as a safe system. So does Alex Padilla, California’s Democratic secretary of state, who says there is “no safer ... way to exercise your right to vote than from the safety and convenience of your own home.”

Research by Alexander’s group has found that an average of nearly two of every 100 mail-in ballots were voided in statewide elections between 2010 and 2018. However, over that time, the rate of disqualification has improved, dropping from over 140,000 ballots, or 2.9% in the 2010 general election, to 84,825 ballots, or 1%, in 2018.

Last March, the highest rejection rate in California was in San Francisco, where 9,407 ballots, or nearly 5% of the total, were set aside, mostly because they did not arrive on time. By contrast, in rural Plumas County northeast of Sacramento, all of the 8,207 mail-in ballots received were accepted.

In Los Angeles County, nearly 2,800 ballots were nullified because the voter forgot to sign it, then couldn’t be found to fix the error. Statewide, that careless mistake spiked nearly 13,000 ballots.

More than 1,000 ballots were disqualified in Fresno County because the signature didn’t match the one on file with election officials. The same problem nixed over 1,300 ballots in San Diego County — and over 14,000 statewide. In some of those cases, voting experts say, a family member might have signed for others in the household, which is illegal.

Some voters apparently filled out their ballots then left them on the kitchen table: In more than 800 instances, envelopes were returned to election officials without the marked ballot inside.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said ultimately a voter has the responsibility to fill out the ballot correctly and get it in the mail on time. Sometimes, “it’s just a product of voters forgetting,” Kelley said.

States reject tens of thousands of mail ballots in this year's primaries, setting off alarm bells for November
Mail voting is the safest method in a pandemic. But pitfalls could trip up a potentially decisive number of people.
July 18, 2020, 2:30 AM MDT
By Jane C. Timm |NBC


New Yorker Sasha Aickin, 43, has no idea if his vote counted.

It took weeks for his absentee ballot to arrive — appearing in his mailbox just three days before the election on June 23. It came with two sets of instructions in very fine print. Neither set, Aickin said, told him to sign the envelope or had complete information about his options for returning the ballot. He saw the city's Board of Elections account tweet confirming that he could drop it off at his local polling location.

Come Election Day, however, the Brooklyn poll worker to whom he handed his ballot seemed unsure.

“I walked away with very little confidence that my vote was going to be counted,” Aickin said in a phone interview. “And I don’t know if I’m ever going to find out if my vote was counted, because I handed it to someone who didn’t seem to know what to do with it.”

New York is one of the more than a dozen states that drastically expanded the ability of eligible voters to cast a ballot by mail in this year's primary elections due to the coronavirus public health emergency.

But that expansion — necessary, government and public health officials have argued, in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19 — has strained systems accustomed to handling only thousands of mail-in or absentee ballots at a time, causing weeks of delays in counting that have experts worried that Election Day in November could drag into Election Week.

The flood of additional mail ballots in the primaries has also revealed another problem that could have enormous consequences for November: a sharp increase in ballot rejections. Ballots can be tossed for voter errors like not signing in all the right places, having a signature that doesn't exactly match one's voter registration signature, or reaching election officials too late.

In California alone, a state that allowed all eligible voters to cast a ballot by mail prior to the pandemic and is accustomed to processing millions of those ballots, more than 102,000 ballots were rejected in its March 3 primary, up from 69,000 in the state's 2016 primary.

That number includes some mail ballots that were surrendered by voters who chose to vote in person instead, but the majority of them — some 70,000 ballots — simply arrived too late, according to data first reported by The Associated Press and provided to NBC News by the California secretary of state’s office. Nearly 13,000 voters forgot to sign the ballot, while more than 14,000 signatures were declared a mismatch by officials.

In Wisconsin's April 7 primary, the rejection rate was 1.8 percent, with more than 20,000 mail ballots rejected, according to state data. That's 12 times the number of mail ballots rejected in the 2016 presidential primary.Another 79,000 late ballots were only counted in this year's primary after a court order demanded the state count ballots postmarked on time but delayed by the mail.

“I'm quite worried that there’s going to be many voters disenfranchised for inadvertent noncompliance with absentee ballot rules," said Rick Hasen, a professor and an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.

That's because many voters have never voted by mail, and "in part because some states don’t have a lot of experience processing these ballots," he said.

Studies also show that minority voters are more likely to have their ballots rejected than white voters.

In Florida's March 17 primary, election officials tossed 18,500 ballots — roughly 1.3 percent of all those cast — according to a recent analysis. Ohio rejected more than 20,000 ballots — 1.2 percent of the mail ballots cast — in its April 28 primary, according to state election results.

Kentucky’s State Board of Elections hasn’t finished compiling data from its June 23 primary, but in Jefferson County, more than 8,000 ballots, or approximately 4.4 percent of the county's ballots, were tossed — more than half because the voter had forgotten to sign the ballot or its envelope. In 2018, the state rejected 8 percent of absentee ballots — just 294 ballots, according to local reports.

The office of Georgia’s secretary of state said that counties aren’t asked to report absentee ballot rejection rates to the state, but in 2018 they rejected 3 percent of absentee ballots. The state saw more than a million people vote by mail in its June 9 primary.

A late ballot is the No. 1 reason absentee ballots are rejected, according to the data published in the Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) from 2018 and 2016. Mismatched signatures or missing signatures follow as the second and third most common reasons. A rejected ballot doesn't mean a voter is ineligible to cast a ballot — though it could — and experts say that voter error often appears to be the cause, such as in the case of forgetting to sign one of multiple signature lines on the ballot or not sealing an interior envelope.

Sometimes it's not even voter error: a missing or unreadable postmark can get a ballot tossed, as can mail delays.


Advocates and experts say that seemingly low ballot rejection rates will have big impacts and millions of ballots could be rejected in the general election. States with large and healthy mail voting operations typically have rejection rates below 1 percent, but the average state rejection rate for absentee voting in 2018 was 1.4 percent.

"This year, the rejection rates are going to be higher," said Wendy Weiser, vice president of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. An electorate inexperienced with mail voting will be more error-prone, and election workers and systems aren't used to processing as many mail ballots.

"Take a look at New York — New York always has high rejection rates, it has been alarming in this cycle," she said, pointing to a NY1 report indicating extremely high rejection rates in certain New York City districts.

Ballot counting is still ongoing in the city, but New York state had the highest rate of absentee ballot rejection of any state in the United States in 2018, according to EAVS data. Nearly 14 percent of the returned absentee ballots, more than 34,000, were tossed by election officials in 2018.

The League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit in July alleging that New York's processes toss too many eligible ballots, arguing that it was unconstitutional not to give voters a chance to fix ballot errors. A plaintiff in the suit is a woman with an essential tremor, a neurological condition that keeps her from always maintaining a consistent signature.

Aickin, the New York voter worried about the status of his ballot, is a former chief technology officer of Redfin, a real estate firm, and lived in San Francisco for 22 years. He said that in his experience, voting by mail in California was simple and user-friendly.

But when NBC News asked both the city and the independent agency that oversees New York City elections whether or not Aickin's ballot had been counted, the agency didn't respond, and the city said that the agency wouldn't tell them. Aickin hopes to vote by mail again in November's general election in New York, but worries the system in place isn't up to the task.

“I don’t know what I could do better to make sure my vote counts,” he said.

I voted last month in person in Georgia, straight ticket red!

Kat-Of-Kontroversy wrote:

I voted last month in person in Georgia, straight ticket red!

Gal pal and I always vote by mail, with no problems at all. Colorado's system allows you to check online to be sure your vote was tallied correctly.

I don't trust that mail in crap nor would I believe looking on the internet. Sure, looking at it says how you voted by what you see but they could have changed it going through the motions.

I live outside the country. Democrats abroad sure makes it easy to vote here. No doubt there’s a Republicans abroad doing the same. I appreciate it. November 3rd and days following promises to be full of fun.

USPS Fails Mail-In Ballot Test
BY RICK MORAN JUL 25, 2020 9:17 AM EST


 
CBS News decided to test the system upon which the government will entrust the sanctity of the ballot this November. And the U.S. Postal Service flubbed it.

This is not about gaming the system, or voter fraud, or stuffing the mail with fake ballots from illegal aliens. This is about the competency of the USPS to deliver official ballots sent through the mail on time, and to the right people. They proved that the 100 million or more Americans who plan to mail in their ballots should not expect their vote to be counted unless they mail it weeks prior to the election deadlines in each state.

And even then there’s no guarantee it will be processed and counted.

The parameters of the test were simple and straightforward. CBS mailed 100 ballots to locations across Philadelphia in an experiment to see how long it took the ballots to arrive. A post office box was set up to receive the returned ballots.

A few days later, another 100 ballots were mailed to another 100 locations in the city. The results should frighten Democrats who claim they are all about “every vote being counted.”

A week after initial ballots were sent, most ballots appeared to be missing from the P.O. box.

“I don’t see anything back there for you,” a postal worker told Dokoupil when he received the mail. “That’s all I have back there right now.”

After asking for a manager and explaining the situation to them, the votes were found.

“They had them somewhere else,” the postal worker said.

Ho-hum, well, no one is perfect. That’s the point, isn’t it?

The mysterious problems at the local post office also included missorted mail.

“We got a birthday card from Mike to Ronnie,” Dokoupil said, as he read a postcard mistakenly placed in “CBS This Morning’s” P.O. box. “Have a sweet b-day. Get it? There’s a bee on top.”

The postcard, along with another piece of missorted mail, was then sent to the correct recipient.

In the end, the tally of late, misdirected, and missorted mail should concern anyone interested in the integrity of our elections.

Out of the initial batch mailed a week earlier, 97 out of 100 votes had arrived. Three simulated persons, or 3% of voters, were effectively disenfranchised by mail by giving their ballots a week to arrive. In a close election, 3% could be pivotal.

Four days after mailing the second batch of mock ballots, 21% of the votes hadn’t arrived.

According to Postal Service recommendations, “voters should mail their return ballots at least one week prior to the due date.”

However, nearly half of all states still allow voters to request ballots less than a week before the election.

Democrats who are pushing this notion that a mail-in election won’t be any different from an in-person election should listen to the voters who are far more grounded in reality.

“I’m scared that it might get lost in the mail,” potential voter Kim Tucker said. “I just want to make sure that my vote is submitted, like, I see that it’s submitted, that it actually counts.”

The November election is shaping up to be the mother of all clusterfarks. At every level — federal, state, and local — election officials are sounding the alarm. The system was not built to handle 120 million mailed ballots. Processing and protecting those ballots is beyond the abilities of almost every state.

The concern is not only over the integrity of the ballot. The avalanche of legal challenges to the results will almost certainly run for years and may even delay state and local legislatures from sitting.

Democrats will bring all of this on themselves. It’s a shame that the rest of us are going to suffer for their stupidity.