Approximately one in five of all the votes in a Paterson, New Jersey, spring election have been thrown out by a judge for being fraudulent. Now four men — three of them Democrat councilmen — have been charged with at least four counts of election fraud in connection with the incident.
So, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many left-wing news outlets accused President Trump of stoking fear of massive vote fraud connected with mail-in ballots “without evidence,” they didn’t have to wait very long to get some evidence.
The May 12 election in Paterson came under strong suspicion of fraud when the U.S. Post Office found several hundred ballots in one mailbox. The discovery set off an investigation by the attorney general’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, which found many additional incidents of ballot theft and ballots fraudulently filled out. More than 3,000 votes in the election were ultimately disqualified as fraudulent.
Councilmen Michael Jackson and Shahin Khalique, along with Councilman-Elect Alex Mendez, have all been charged with the following: fraud in casting mail-in vote in the third degree; unauthorized possession of ballots in the third degree; tampering with public records in the third degree, and falsifying or tampering with records in the fourth degree. Mendez faces additional charges of second-degree election fraud and third-degree false registration or transfer. A fourth accomplice, 20-year-old Abu Razyen, is charged with fraud in casting mail-in vote and unauthorized possession of ballots in the third degree.
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Additionally, both Mendez and Khalique won their races by razor-thin margins, leading to speculation that their vote fraud could have swung the election in their favor. Mendez ousted incumbent William McKoy by just 245 votes, while Khalique held onto his seat on the council with only an eight-vote margin. A subsequent recount had Khalique tied with his competitor.
Incumbent Councilman McKoy is seeking an injunction to keep Mendez from taking his seat on the council until the matter can be settled. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy — who ordered that the special election be done completely by mail-in ballot due to COVID-19 — has also asked the accused councilmen to step aside while the charges are reviewed.
President Trump also weighed in on the local New Jersey election. “Absentee ballots are fine. A person has to go through a process to get and use them. Mail-in-voting, on the other hand, will lead to the most corrupt election [in] USA history. Bad things happen with mail-ins. Just look at special election in [Paterson], New Jersey. 19 percent of ballots a FRAUD!”
The frustration with the New Jersey voting controversy is not all from the right wing, either. An iconic liberal organization, the NAACP, has called for the Paterson election in May to be invalidated and a new election held.
“These kinds of acts make people not want to vote anymore. They feel disenfranchised, disconnected, that their votes don’t count, and that is not fair to people,” said local NAACP leader Reverend Kenneth Clayton. “Invalidate the election. Let’s do it again.”
Clayton is filing a formal complaint to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, which will seek to have the May 13 election invalidated.
Benjie Wimberly, the Deputy Assembly Speaker of New Jersey and a Democrat, was also “fed up” with the mail-in-voting controversy and has said that, regardless of COVID-19, in-person voting is a necessity. Wimberly seems to believe that expanded mail-in-voting could disenfranchise voters.
“Harvesting votes of any kind should be a red flag for any person who is a resident, not just law enforcement,” Wimberly said. “We do not want our voters to become disenfranchised.”
The Paterson situation is just a small taste of the type of chaos that will likely ensue if many Democrats get their way and mail-in-voting is expanded for the coming general election in November. Yet, in the GOP, only Trump, along with Attorney General William Barr, seems to be highly concerned about the integrity of the November election.
The Democrats are strongly pushing vote-by-mail not only as health issue as the COVID-19 virus threat continues, but as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in April, a way to “protect the integrity of our elections.”
If by “protecting the integrity of our elections” means chaos and ensuring Democrats win, the Pelosi is right. And it seems clear that the Democrats are openly rooting for chaos in November. Let the situation in Paterson be an object lesson to us all: A massive increase in mail-in-voting will lead to an election in which the result of every race will be in question.
And yes, it will be chaos.
Image: iStock/Getty Images Plus
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected]
