Some Opinions
| Some Opinions 1. Upstate New York City "Massive" Voter Fraud Case By Eric Shawn Published January 28, 2011 | FoxNews.com Two Democratic politicians in an upstate New York city have been charged in a "massive" voter fraud case first reported a year ago on Fox News. A 59-page, 116-count indictment charges Troy Democratic City Councilman Michael LoPorto and Edward McDonough, Democratic Commissioner of the Rensselaer County Board of Elections, with forgery and criminal possession of a forged instrument. The two men arrive in court in handcuffs on Friday and pleaded not guilty. Seven other public officials and political operatives are said to be targets of the continuing investigation. The Fox News Voter Fraud unit first reported the brazen allegations just over a year ago, with reports that absentee ballots and applications were forged to try to stuff the ballot box and steal an election. The case involves absentee ballots from the Working Families Party primary in September of 2009 for the Troy City Council and Rensselaer County legislature. It has been alleged the signatures and absentee exucses of unsuspecting voters were forged, all to ensure the Democratic candidates also won the Working Families Party line. Democratic candidates in New York State often run as Working Families Party hopefuls. "No one is entitled to more than one vote," said Special Prosecutor Trey Smith, who brought the case. "Anyone who misappropriates the vote of a fellow citizen, takes from all of us. Anyone who attempts to minimize what happened, by saying this has been going on for years, or their vote doesn't matter, trivializes a principle of equality which is historically American, and as our founders believed, a fundamental right of all human beings....not surprisingly, no one has come forward to take full responsibility for the massive fraud perpetrated on the citizens of Rensselaer County." Smith even collected DNA samples from the majority of the Troy City Council and others, which were compared to samples taken from absentee ballots and applications. Those swabbed include five City Councilmen, among them the Council President, as well as four other public officials and political operatives. Some of them have told Fox News that they did nothing wrong, or had no comment. Last October, we met Councilman LoPorto, who owns a popular local restaurant, and he told us he had "nothing to say," but then denied any wrongdoing when we questioned him further. "Did you do anything wrong?" we asked. He answered, "No." "Did you try to steal an election?" "No." "Did you forge any ballots?" "No," said LoPorto when we interviewed him before the start of the monthly Troy City Council meeting. LoPorto would not comment as he left court Friday, but his lawyer, Michael Feit said he is not guilty. “This ends the first part of this case, which having been tried in the media, now we get a chance to defend these charges in a forum where we can be heard, where all the evidence will be presented and the rules of law have to be followed." "No one tried to steal any election," insisted Troy City Council President Clem Campana in October. He denied any wrongdoing, but also claimed that the case "is Troy politics at its best, it’s been going on forever." He called the scandal "politically motivated," and blamed former Republican County legislator and Troy official Bob Mirch, who first discovered the allegations and hired investigators to secure the voters' affidavits. Mirch is a pugnacious veteran of Troy's combative political scene, who because he served as the city's public works chief, is known by the colorful sobriquet, "The Garbage Man." He was defeated for re-election in November of 2009, in part because he thinks voters didn't buy his allegations of voter fraud and thought the issue was all baseless mudslinging. Today, Mirch reacted to the indictments by saying, "I was correct." "It's been frustrating waiting this long," he told Fox News, but said "I am grateful it is finally happening, and hopefully the Special Prosecutor will continue on, because there are seven to ten more people who were involved in this voter fraud scheme and they need to be brought to justice." When the story first broke, voters who told us they had fake votes cast in their names were outraged. "I can't believe they thought they would get away with this," voter Jessica Boomhower told Fox News. She said a phony absentee ballot was submitted in her name, and that she had no idea that she supposedly voted. Her absentee application claimed she would be attending "a work conference in Boston" on election day, but she said that was not true. "They decided they would vote for us," she said. "I am sure this goes on a lot in politics and it is very rare when they do get caught." "I never signed a thing," voter Brian Suozzo told us. His absentee application claimed he was "at home recovering from a medical procedure," which he also said was a lie. "You always hear about this stuff on the news, but to have it happen to me...that someone took my signature and voted with it, I feel extremely violated." Two of the absentee ballot applications cited "bus to casino," as reasons those voters supposedly couldn't show up at the polls. Smith called the affected voters, victims, saying "one is deaf and can communicate effectively only in sign language. Those who believed that the victims would never complain about the misappropriation of their voting rights, were wrong. The victims spoke and now the grand jury has spoken with this indictment." In a statement to New York State Police, McDonough said his understanding was that the absentee ballots "would be picked up and delivered to the voters." He said after the allegations became public, that he became "angry at what the perception was that I was getting from the media as it pertained to the Democratic party." But at a meeting of political operatives to discuss the scandal, McDonough admitted to police investigators that "I did ask if anyone was recording the meeting," and he "expressed anger that my office had been compromised by someone's operatives," according to the police documents. Former Troy City Democratic Chairman Frank LaPosta told Fox News that his fellow Democrats ostracized him for speaking out against the allegations, and that the prosecutions show he was right. "I feel vindicated," he says, "because I was the only one who stood up when this happened and said whoever was involved should leave office, and my fellow Democrats turned against me." LaPosta also said he feels "sad for the Democratic Party in Troy," and that "it is a shame that elections are not conducted in a fair way, but the people responsible for this fraud should pay the price for what they’ve done." One political operative who allegedly gathered absentee ballot applications, former Troy Housing worker and Democratic Committeeman Anthony DeFiglio, told the state police that "it was common knowledge that these people were never going to receive an absentee ballot. This is a political strategy to get control of a third party line." He also claimed that the practice "is an ongoing scheme, and it occurs on both sides of the aisle," and that "what appears as a huge conspiracy to non-political persons, is really a normal political tactic that went out of control." The investigation of at least seven other politicians and political operatives apparently continues.
If you suspect voter problems where you live, e-mail us at:
Troy Democratic City Councilman Micahel LoPorto arrived in court Friday morning facing felony criminal charges. Democratic Commissioner of the Rensselar County Board of Elections, Edward McDonough is also charged with the same crime, both pleaded not guilty. Troy Democratic City Councilman Micahel LoPorto arrived in court Friday morning facing felony criminal charges. Democratic Commissioner of the Rensselar County Board of Elections, Edward McDonough is also charged with the same crime, both pleaded not guilty.
2. Devvy Kidd
VOTE FRAUD: IT'S NOT JUST THE MACHINES - PART 2 of 2!
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd301.htm
3. The Issues are Meaningless
The Issues are Meaningless!
How many times has it been said by various voters that the guy I always vote for always looses? Are most voters' judgments that bad or are they that stupid?
Is it any of the above or is it all of the above? Is it possible that something else is at play here? Did George Bush really win Florida in 2000? Did George Bush really win Ohio in 2004 after two hundred and fifty thousand manufacturing jobs
were lost?
The talk show on radio and television are constantly harping on the issues of the day such as illegal immigration, Nafta, Global Warming, corporate the satisfaction or the benefit of the general public. The reason is quite simple.
The corporations control our government at the federal state and local levels.
Their deep pockets can buy any election for just about any candidate!
How do we address and begin to solve the key issues of the day? The only answer is to change voting procedures on all primary and general elections.
Anything you purchase, you get a receipt but do you get a receipt at the voting booth? Do you have anything to prove that certain issues and candidates were voted on by you? The answer is an emphatic, "NO"!
The way it is today, no one can prove the validity of any election. We are supposed to trust the political hacks that work for the county election boards! In God I trust, everyone else pays cash. Candidate B challenges candidate A for any office. Candidate A is a three term incumbent with lots of baggage. Candidate B is a political newcomer who ran a vigorous campaign that convinced a lot of people that real change was needed. The votes are counted
and Candidate B looses by 25 votes. Candidate B asks those who voted for him to send a copy of their voting receipts to him and lots of people do. Candidate B then discovers that he has fifty more votes than the local election board said he had! Candidate B now has proven he is the winner and he will take office!
This is the only way turn around this once great nation. Once this election process is corrected, then all the issues of the day can be realistically addressed because we now would have people in office who will work for us rather than the special elite interests that dominate today.
Organize now in your local communities to get a receipt at your local voting precinct. The powers that be will fight you with all the dirty tricks they can think of because their power is now being challenged! Do not be dismayed because
there is always strength in numbers especially when you have truth on your side.
Jim Bunosky
4. Illegals
Illegals and Prostitution!
In The First Catholic Slovak Union's newspaper Jednota, we see May's "Apostleship of Paryer for Benedict XVI is 'That the shameful and monstrous trafficking in human beings which sadly involves millions of women and children, may stop."
Less we feel so righteous, the article goes on to say that a "As many as 17,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. each year form Asia, Central and South Ameirca, and Eastern Europe." The U.S. State Dept. says they are exploited for prostitution, pornography, etc.
Less the suburbs feel so smug, check out the book The Sacred Bath: An American Teen's Story of Modern Day Slavery where a fifteen year girl was drugged, raped and tortured in in an upper class suburb of Detroit.
On the 2006 Eagle Forum DVD,
Phyllis Schafley further mentions the problems with " The high Cost of Illegal Aliens".
To see how widespread the problem is in the USA and some of its unseemly consequences, see my web page,
"Plain Truth".
Can we believe the US Government wants to solve the Illegal Problem when one of the biggest government contractors has 2 call centers welcoming "IMMIGRANTS"
and listing the benefits for them?
Isn't it "Welcome them with open arms."?
http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2006/05/08/daily16.html
Pray that the Good Lord converts our hearts back to him.
Then laugh at this following spoof.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOHOHKBEqE
Doesn't laughter show we don't fear them?
Sincerely,
5. More Voter Fraud
Citizens' Group Helps Uncover Alleged Rampant Voter Fraud in Houston
By Ed Barnes
Published September 25, 2010
| FoxNews.com
Voter selects candidate for U.S president in voting booth, Nov. 4, 2008. (AP)
When Catherine Engelbrecht and her friends sat down and started talking politics several years ago, they soon agreed that talking wasn't enough. They wanted to do more. So when the 2008 election came around, "about 50" of her friends volunteered to work at Houston's polling places.
"What we saw shocked us," she said. "There was no one checking IDs, judges would vote for people that asked for help. It was fraud, and we watched like deer in the headlights."
Their shared experience, she says, created "True the Vote," a citizen-based grassroots organization that began collecting publicly available voting data to prove that what they saw in their day at the polls was, indeed, happening -- and that it was happening everywhere.
"It was a true Tea Party moment," she remembers.
Like most voter watchdog groups, she said, her group started small. They decided to investigate voting fraud in general, not just at the polling places, and at first they weren't even sure what to look for -- and where to look for it.
"The first thing we started to do was look at houses with more than six voters in them" Engelbrecht said, because those houses were the most likely to have fraudulent registrations attached to them. "Most voting districts had 1,800 if they were Republican and 2,400 of these houses if they were Democratic . . ."
"But we came across one with 24,000, and that was where we started looking."
It was Houston's poorest and predominantly black district, which has led some to accuse the group of targeting poor black areas. But Engelbrecht rejects that, saying, "It had nothing to do with politics. It was just the numbers."
The task was overwhelming. With 1.9 million voters and 886 voting precincts, Houston's Harris County is the second largest county in the country -- and the key to Texas elections.
The group called for help and quickly got 30 donated computers and "tens of thousands of hours" of volunteer work. And then the questions started to arise.
"Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address," Engelbrecht said. "We then decided to look at who was registering the voters."
Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state's office and the Harris County district attorney.
Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Steve Caddle, who also works for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.
Caddle told local newspapers that there "had been mistakes made," and he said he had fired 30 workers for filing defective voter registration applications. He could not be reached for this article.
"The integrity of the voting rolls in Harris County, Texas, appears to be under an organized and systematic attack by the group operating under the name Houston Votes," the Harris voter registrar, Leo Vasquez, charged as he passed on the documentation to the district attorney. A spokesman for the DA's office declined to discuss the case. And a spokesman for Vasquez said that the DA has asked them to refrain from commenting on the case.
The outcome of the efforts grew in importance the day after Vasquez made his announcement. On the morning of Aug. 27, a three-alarm fire destroyed almost all of Harris County's voting machines, throwing the upcoming Nov. 2 election into turmoil. While the cause wasn't determined, the $40 million blaze, according to press reports, means election officials will be focused on creating a whole new voting system in six weeks. Just how they do it will determine how vulnerable the process becomes.
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