ections Reversed after Ballot Harvesting Scandals

This excerpt is from Fred Lucas’s new book Voter Suppression – The Left’s Assault On Clean Elections , now available from Bombardier Books.

Sometimes, the paid operatives are called “ballot brokers” in Florida and Texas. After significant scandals, both states passed laws banning ballot harvesting.

H.R. H.R. The text of the bill stated that the state would allow a voter to name any person to return a voted or sealed absentee vote… and could not limit the number of voted or sealed absentee votes any person can return.”

Here are seven examples where elections were overturned due to ballot harvesting scandals.

1. North Carolina Congressional Race

Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. was convicted of insurance fraud. However, he was a convicted felon for insurance fraud. He was a trusted advisor to both the Republican and Democratic parties in North Carolina.

Mark Harris, a Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional district, hired Dowless’s firm to help him run his campaign. John Harris, Mark Harris’s son, warned his father not to bring Dowless into his campaign due to previous election shenanigans. Harris should have listened.

In a gloomy year, Harris defeated Dan McCready, his Democrat opponent, by 905 votes. This is about 0.3 percent of all the ballots cast that November.

But the victory would crumble. Despite the fact that Democrats often laugh at the idea of mass mail-in voting being susceptible to fraud, North Carolinians would and the nation see Democrats get a bad taste of what it’s like to be on the losing side of fraud.

After evidence of “concerted fraudulent activity related to absentee ballots,” the North Carolina State Board of Elections refused certification of the results. This fraud involved vote trafficking, also known by ballot harvesting, where third parties, such as candidates, collect and deliver votes.

The North Carolina election board found that absentee vote requests were submitted fraudulently under forged signatures. This included a deceased voter. The final report states that Dowless paid people to collect absentee request forms, collect absentee votes, and falsify absentee witness certifications. His employees were then compensated according to how many absentee votes they collected. Corrupt incentives were also included.

Mark Harris, who denied knowing Dowless’s activities, said that a new election should take place and declined to run for it.

After conducting 142 interviews with voters, the board declared Harris’ victory null and also nullified two other local elections. It ordered a new special elections. The board found that Dowless was the perpetrator of the fraud scheme, which was “enabled and supported by a well-funded criminal operation.”

The state Board of Elections determined that the election was “corrupted by fraud, irregularities, and irregularities that so pervasive that its result is tainted as a fruit of an operation manifestly unfair for the voters and corrosive of our system of representative governance.” It also ordered a new election due to the “coordinated and unlawful, well-funded absentee vote scheme” that “perpetrated corruption and fraud upon the election.” The board members concluded that it was impossible to determine the exact number of ballots affected by the fraud or whether it determined the outcome.

In February 2019, a Wake County grand jury indicted Dowless for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Dowless was also accused of possessing absentee ballots and perjury in connection with the 2016 general election as well as the 2018 primary election. Dowless, however, died from lung cancer in April 2022 before he was brought to trial.

McCready was defeated by Republican Dan Bishop in the September 2019 special election.

This case and others show that it is possible to plot to steal an election. Although it was stopped in this instance, the fact remains that what happened in North Carolina isn’t illegal in other states. Yes, voter intimidation and outright forgery are illegal in almost every state. However, laws that allow ballot harvesting are open to such practices.

2. Texas Ballots: A Mess

Guadalupe Rivera , a former Weslaco City Commissioner, pleaded guilty in 2016 to one count of illegal “assistance” to an voter in a 2013 race that he won by sixteen votes.

Rivera admitted that he filled out an absentee ballot in a different way than the voter directed, or without the voter’s direction.

A judge determined that thirty ballots had been illegally cast and ordered a new election. Rivera lost. He was initially charged with sixteen charges. However, he was able to plead guilty to fifteen. He was sentenced with a year probation and fined $500.

3. Florida: Coerced Ballots

In 2017, Mayor Anthony Grant, a felony for voting fraud and misdemeanor absentee voter violations, was convicted in Eatonville. Prosecutors claimed that Grant, a candidate in 2015 for the presidency, coerced absentee voters into voting for him.

Prosecutors allege that Grant solicited absentee votes from nonresidents in at least one instance. Grant, a former mayor lost the in-person vote, but won the election with twice the absentee ballots than Bruce Mount.

The indictment of Grant led to the suspension of Rick Scott, then-Gov. Rick Scott suspended Grant. He was sentenced to four-year probation and four hundred hours community service after his conviction.

4. Trouble in the Empire State

Hector Ramirez, a New York State Assembly candidate, pleaded guilty one count of criminal possession o a forged instrument during the 2014 campaign.

Ramirez was charged by the prosecution with deceiving voters into submitting their absentee ballots on the false presumption that it would submit them. Prosecutors said that Ramirez’s campaign insisted on his name being included on at least thirty-five of the absentee ballots.

Ramirez won the initial election, but a recount determined that Ramirez lost by two votes.

Steven Barrett, Bronx Supreme Court Justice, ruled that Ramirez cannot run for office for three more years.

5. Vote or get evicted

The state prosecutors claimed that Mayor Robinson threatened to evict residents if they didn’t vote for her.

After they intimidated disabled and poor citizens living in public housing and in properties Robinson owns into voting, Ruth Robinson, her husband and her sons were convicted of voter fraud. Some of the ballots Robinson had filled out were used to abuse local government power in Martin.

Prosecutors said that the family members offered bribes for votes. She was sentenced for ninety months.

6. The East Chicago Way

In the 2003 East Chicago mayor’s race, George Pabey held a 199-vote lead over Robert Patrick, the eight-term incumbent. It was clear that the incumbent was the winner after 278 absentee votes were received.

Allan “Twig”, a local political operative, convinced the mayor’s voters to let him fill out absentee ballots in return for jobs. Simmons pleaded guilty and was sentenced with three years probation and 100 hours community service.

The trial lasted for a week and a quarter and featured 165 witnesses. The judge ruled that the mayor and his associates “perverted absentee voting and compromised the integrity of that election’s results.” He also found “direct, competent and convincing evidence” that showed the “voluminous and widespread nature of the misconduct.”

The fraud involved voter intimidation, vote buying, and phony absentee voter applications forms. At least seven people were convicted or pleaded guilty to the fraud by 2008. The Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the case was “compelled” by a series of actions that made it impossible to determine who had received the most legal votes.

7. Voting Vice in Miami

In 1997, Miami Mayor Joe Carollo won an overwhelming victory in a five-way race that included in-person voting. However, it wasn’t quite a majority. The Nov. 4 contest was rerun on Nov. 13. His opponent, Xavier Suarez got two-thirds absentee votes and won. Evidence was found that at least five thousand absentee ballots were fraudulently cast by law enforcement.

According to the report of the Miami-Dade County grand jury, 54 people were convicted in the case of voting fraud. This included a Miami City commissioner who was charged with being accessory to voter fraud, the chief of staff of the commissioner, and the father of the chief of staff.

Investigators discovered that the scam included stolen ballots and false registration addresses. Additionally, hundreds of illegally cast ballots were obtained by 29 “ballot broker” who invoked their right to not testify in order to avoid being incriminated. Volunteers forced elderly food stamp recipients to vote during the scheme.

In 1999, the Miami Herald won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering election wrongdoing. The newspaper featured the story of a 70 year-old woman who suffered a stroke in a hospital and was forced by harvesters to vote Suarez. Other stories were about seniors in nursing homes and hospitals being exploited.

The trial court ordered a fresh election. However, the appeals court ruled against the city and overturned the election. Carollo was re-elected as mayor. Appeal court ruled that because of the “massive absentee voter Fraud”, it was best to not encourage such fraud by holding a new election.

“[W]ere we to approve another election as the proper remedy for extensive absentee voter fraud, we would send out the message that one election would be the worst thing that could happen in the face voter fraud,” the appeals court stated.

The post 7 Elections Are Reversed After Ballot Harvesting Scandals originally appeared on The Daily Signal.