RUTHFULLY YOURS

Many news media, political activists and social media giants have gotten on the bandwagon that voter fraud is fiction. It is not.

A review of court cases and recent indictments – including one this week in Philadelphia against a former congressman – finds there have been at least four dozen cases in criminal and civil court since the last presidential election in 2016 in which voter fraud has led to charges, convictions, lawsuits or plea deals.

The schemes have ranged from old fashion ballot box stuffing to absentee and mail-in ballot fraud.

Here are a dozen of the more egregious examples.

Philly Fraud Case Expands

The U.S. Justice Department this past week charged former Democratic congressman Michael Myers with stuffing ballot boxes, bribing an elected official, falsifying records, obstructing justice and voting multiple times in federal elections in Philadelphia.

Myers was the second official charged in the scheme.

Domenick DeMuro, a Democratic ward chairman in that city, admitted in a plea deal that he had “fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear,” ptoecutors  said.

DeMuro allegedly had a network of clients who paid him significant sums of money to rig elections over several years.

New Jersey mail-in ballot scheme exposed

Four New Jersey residents, including one city council member and one city councilmen-elect in Patterson, N.J., were charged last month in what state officials was a mail-in ballot fraud scheme. The four were charged with multiple crimes including voting fraud, tampering with public records and unauthorized possession of multiple vote-by-mail ballots.

West Virginia mail carrier nabbed in mail-in ballot scheme

A mail carrier in Pendleton County, W.V., recently admitted to investigators that he altered mail-in voting ballot documents. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of West Virginia said in a press release in June that it was charging Thomas Cooper, a worker with the U.S. Postal Service, with “attempted election fraud.”

An affidavit supplied by that office to Just the News states the Pendleton County Clerk received several absentee mail-in ballot requests “in which the voter’s party-ballot request appeared to have been altered by use of a black-ink pen.” On five of the requests, “it appeared that the voters ballot choice was changed from Democrat to Republican

California voter fraud conviction exposes Skid Row scheme

In February, 62-year-old Norman Hall pled guilty in a scheme to pay money and cigarettes to homeless people on Los Angeles’ Skid Row in exchange for false and forged signatures on ballot petitions and voter registration forms. Hall got a year in jail.

Illinois let non-citizens register to vote in blunder

In January, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White disclosed in a letter to the Legislature that a “programming error” in a signature pad at driver services facilities led to 574 non-U.S. citizens accidentally being registered as voters. At least one, and perhaps as many as 15, non-citizens may have voted in the 2018 election. White’s office says the problem has been fixed.

“We view it as a significant problem,” Matt Dietrich of the Illinois State Board Of Elections said at the time.

Alabama Absentee Fraud

In 2019,  former Gordon, Ala., Mayor Elbert Melton was convicted of absentee ballot fraud in a mayoral race he won by just 16 votes.

Melton was sentenced recently to one year in prison and two years of probation after his conviction on charges of absentee ballot fraud and second-degree theft of property.

Pay-to-Vote Scheme exposed in New Jersey

New Jersey real estate developer Frank Raia, 67, a Democrat, was convicted in 2019 of overseeing a scheme to pay low-income residents in Hoboken’s subsidized housing $50 for their votes in the 2013 election.

Wisconsin county supervisor admits to ballot fraud

Former Milwaukee County Supervisor Peggy West, 47, pleaded guilty in 2018 to election fraud for falsifying signatures on petitions to qualify for the spring election.

Prosecutors said several people whose names appear on West’s nomination petition told a detective they never signed. Two even said the printed name next to their bogus signatures were not spelled correctly.

Absentee Ballot Theft in Florida

In 2018, authorities arrested Florida man Bret Warren after they determined he had stolen five absentee ballots and fraudulently voted with them. Warren eventually pled no contest to two charges of false swearing in connection with voting.

Wife of mayoral candidate nabbed in New Mexico

In 2018, New Mexico authorities indicted Laura Seeds on 13 counts of voter fraud related to her husband’s 2016 mayoral race. Seeds was eventually convicted in part for illegally possessing two absentee voter ballots; her husband Robert won the race by two votes.

Indiana cop convicted of voter fraud to help father win race

In 2016, Indiana police officer Lowell Colen was convicted of absentee ballot fraud in an attempt to help his father win a city council election. Colen eventually pled guilty to four felony counts of voter fraud, with prosecutors claiming he filled out false registrations and forged numerous signatures.

Double voting in Arizona

Last month, Randy Allen Jumper pleaded guilty in Arizona to attempting to vote in two states during the 2016 general election: Arizona and Nevada. He was also charged with falsely signing a statement vowing  not to vote in the general election anywhere but Arizona.

Arizona officials said at the time of his plea they have brough about 20 cases of voter fraud in the last decade against people who tried to vote in two states in the same election.