Campaign worker's mother fraudulently voted in D.A. primary

NY Daily News

Like any good son, when Working Families Party campaign worker Rafael Shimunov found out that his mother couldn’t vote in the recent primary for the Queens district attorney, he took to Twitter to complain about voter fraud.

Shimunov, whose mother, Margarita Shimunova, is a registered nurse and immigrant from Uzbekistan, voted for insurgent candidate Tiffany Cabán by paper ballot because the Board of Elections had her registered as a Republican.

“She’s never voted GOP in her life,” he tweeted in response to an ongoing social media conversation about claims the election was rigged. He went on to describe his mother’s health issues and her struggle immigrating from the former Soviet Union as a refugee.

“It’s not right, I heard they’re going to throw my vote away,” she said.

However, BOE records reveal an awkward family secret: Margarita Shimunova is indeed a registered Republican and therefore wasn’t eligible to vote in the June 25 Democratic primary.

Shimunova confirmed to the Daily News Friday that it was, in fact, her signature and date of birth on the BOE form showing she registered to the party of Lincoln in 2008.

But she denied being a Republican and said that she voted for Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.

Records show that the mom voted in six elections since she registered, mostly general elections in which she could vote for either party. But documents show she also voted in the 2016 Republican primary during which Donald Trump carried his home state with 59% of the vote.

Well, that was a stupid thing to do, son. 

You can still vote if you die

From CBS:

This election cycle is dredging up the pain of the past for one Queens woman.

Michelle Dimino’s father, Anthony Baldomir, passed away in October 2012. Since then, she’s been receiving his absentee ballots for the primaries and general elections.

Dimino has made several calls to the board of elections, even sending her father’s death certificate on more than one occasion, but said he is still on the registration list.

“If I’m getting these, there must be in NYC alone hundreds maybe thousands of these going out to dead people. What are they doing with them? Are they shredding them, or ripping them up, or are people just mailing them in?” she said.

CBS2 reached out to the board of elections for comment but have not heard back yet.

Democratic election commissioner thinks "there is a lot of voter fraud"

From the NY Post:

The Manhattan Democratic representative on the city’s Board of Elections was caught on a secret video slamming Mayor Bill de Blasio’s municipal ID program as contributing to “all kinds of fraud” — including at the polls.

“He gave out ID cards, de Blasio. That’s in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything,” Commissioner Alan Schulkin said in the undercover video recorded by a muckraker for conservative nonprofit Project Veritas.

“But they didn’t vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and say, ‘I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card,’ ” he said in the bombshell tape.

Is online voting the way to go?

From Metro:

Legislation introduced by Councilman Fernando Cabrera on Wednesday would require an online voting system where absentee and military ballots could be cast in certain municipal elections.

The proposed system would allow primary, runoff and general election ballots to be cast for mayor, public advocate, city comptroller, borough presidents and council members. A spokeswoman for Cabrera said the system, which would not initially be available for all voters, represents a “baby step.”

There would be a password attached to the proposed voting process, according to the Cabrera spokeswoman. His office is also working with SOE Software, a company that specializes in election modernization.

Still, the idea of online voting worries Neal Rosenstein, government reform coordinator of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

“There’s a ton of folks who say that the system wouldn’t be secure,” he said. “Public confidence in the election process is the most important thing.”

Interesting story about developer and voter fraud

From CBS New York:

The struggle for control of a small town in Sullivan County has drawn the attention of federal agents.

As CBS 2’s Lou Young reported Friday, newcomers have been pitted against longtime residents of the village of Bloomingburg, in what is now a voter fraud investigation.

Some residents of the village at the edge of the Catskills welcomed the FBI agents who poured in on Thursday. One resident took photos as more than 40 agents raided over a dozen locations — the offices and property of developer Shalom Lamm.

“We were hoping to get, you know, things investigated, and maybe it’s finally happening,” said Bloomingburg resident Teek Persuad.

They are worried about a takeover of the village, beginning with Lamm’s controversial townhouse project that is currently under a court challenge. The project would triple the population in the town.

Meanwhile, numerous building renovations started without permits have been ordered stopped, and a series of rental properties also owned by Lamm, have led to a sudden flurry of voter registrations in the last month – right before an election last week.

“You have to be a resident to vote,” said attorney Jonathan Chase. “You don’t vote and then become a resident.

“These people don’t actually live here,” said resident and development Jim O’Shea. “They move in on the weekend, and then they go back to wherever they come from.”

The people whom O’Shea was talking about are all Hasidic or ultra-Orthodox Jews, and critics have said the sudden property purchases and development seem designed to turn Bloomingburg into a religious enclave like some others closer to the city in Rockland County.

An attorney for Lamm acknowledged the voter fraud investigation.

Voting from beyond the grave

From the NY Post:

Investigators posing as dead voters were allowed to cast ballots for this year’s primary and general elections, thanks to antiquated Board of Election registration records and lax oversight by poll workers, authorities said.

The election board’s susceptibility to voter fraud by people impersonating the departed was uncovered during a massive probe of the agency by the Department of Investigation.

The probe uncovered 63 instances when voters’ names should have been stricken from the rolls, but weren’t — even though some of them had died years before.

So maybe we should have to show ID?

Proposed bill would allow immigrants to vote

From the Times Ledger:

Ten City Council members were preparing to introduce a bill that would extend municipal voting rights to legal immigrants, but not all lawmakers are pushing for suffrage.

The potential bill would allow the city’s 1.3 million tax-paying immigrants who hold green cards — and about 500,000 live in Queens — to vote in local elections, according to a spokeswoman from I Vote New York City, an advocacy group.

That means that non-citizens could vote for the mayor, the city comptroller, the city public advocate, members of the City Council and the borough presidents.

“They are entitled to vote in their elections,” said Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone). “When you’re a citizen of America, you have the right to decide America’s future. If it’s their intention to vote, they can become citizens.”

He added that legal immigrants do not have a vested interest in the community and are not considered when passing legislation.

“They’re not apportioned when we look at constituents,” he said. “That’s not how it’s done.”

Halloran also said that the legislation might run into legal trouble.

The language in it was vague, he said, and would be at risk for manipulation by people of questionable resident status.

“If somebody is here on a student visa or a work visa, that is generally intended to be a non-permanent,” he said. “They have no business voting.”

Halloran added that the measure might not even be legal, since the U.S. Constitution requires voters to be citizens and New York state requires them to be residents.

“It’s in violation of federal and state law,” Halloran said. “It has no chance.”

Voters being bussed into 19th District from outside?

"Note these photos -- big vans are taking people from their homes to a physical therapy center in Flushing -- Flushing Medical Clinic is its name.
From there they get into smaller cars, white Dodge Caravan ambulettes, which go to polling places in the 19th District -- then they are taken back to the physical therapy center, where they get back into a big van and taken back home. The physical therapy place is the staging center.
From there, the big van is going to places in downtown Flushing and Jackson Heights -- well outside the district. The people on the vans are seniors -- people in their 70s and 80s. They ain't being taken to work. These photos were taken at around 11 a.m." - anonymous