Disconnect between elected officials and "ordinary citizens" seeking voting answers
State Attorney General Letitia James issued a "cease and desist" order today to an organization that calls itself a group of ordinary, honest citizens seeking answers to apparent voting irregularities.
James' office accused the organization of going door-to-door to “confront voters,” falsely claiming to be election workers and suggesting voters were guilty of felony election fraud.
Newsday reports James' letter to the NY Citizens Audit Civic Fund ordered the group to end any “voter deception and intimidation” or face state and federal charges.
The letter comes after breathless complaints from Board of Election officials as well as Nassau and Suffolk political leaders that people "impersonating" election officials were going door to door questioning residents about their voting histories.
The impression was that this was a shadowy surreptitious group working undercover to scare and intimidate voters.
Yet, representatives of New York Citizens Audit have appeared three times before the Nassau legislature in the last three months, explaining what they are doing and why they are concerned. They publicly identified themselves and, gave their home addresses and home phone numbers on sign in sheets. (Both are from Suffolk.).
None of Nassau's elected officials asked the two if they had gone door-to-door, misrepresenting themselves in an attempt to harass voters.
In fact, nobody said anything to them at all during their appearances before the Nassau legislature, including Monday.
Not even Legis. Josh Lafazan (D-Woodbury), who said when the allegations first surfaced, "We must all be alert and engaged to protect ourselves from being deceived by these malicious imposters. If anyone ever claims to be a Board of Elections employee and confronts you about your voter registration, alert the authorities so that we can hold these bad actors accountable.”
It doesn't appear that Lafazan alerted authorities after any of their three appearances.
On Monday, Susan Hansen of the NY Citizens Audit told legislators:
"This is my third time before you in three months."
She said her civic group had obtained state and county voter records through Freedom of Information requests and found shocking irregularities.
They found 35,000 more votes counted than people who voted in the 2022 election.
She explained, "The sum of everyone who voted in 2022 should match the 2022 vote count. It does not. For some inexplicable reason, there were 35,000 additional votes."
She also said there were 48,000 voter registrations with blank addresses, which should have disqualified them from voting. Yet more than 16,000 in that group voted.
When "ordinary citizens" from the NY Citizens Audit notified numerous public officials of its findings, they were "ignored, criticized and even villified," she said.
Her colleague Patrick Wynne asked why board of election's officials "want to create a hostile relationship between citizens...looking for answer to legitimate questions."
Both Hansen and Wynne urged legislators to look at their group's web page which detail its findings.
Now their organization has been told to shut up.
did they come up during public comment, or were they part of the agenda? Anyone can come up during public comment, no matter how ridiculous (and they often are!) and the legislators usually don't bother to answer the ridiculous people.
ReplyDeleteThey FOILed the NYSVoter data base. So you're absolutely correct, the voter data base is in a state of ridiculous. Also, many elected officials REFUSE agenda spots. Public comment is the only optiib.
DeleteRepublican Shill Celeste now parroting conspiracy Garbage.
ReplyDeleteLetitia James, the pot calling the kettle black!!!
ReplyDelete