Posts

Congressman’s Chief of Staff Tied to Absentee Ballot Vote Fraud Effort

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty

Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff implicated in phantom absentee-ballot requests scheme

By Patricia Mazzei. Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff abruptly resigned Friday after being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests.

Friday afternoon, Garcia said he had asked Jeffrey Garcia, no relation, for his resignation after the chief of staff — also the congressman’s top political strategist — took responsibility for the plot. Hours earlier, law enforcement investigators raided the homes of another of Joe Garcia’s employees and a former campaign aide in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter.

“I’m shocked and disappointed about this,” Garcia, who said he was unaware of the scheme, told The Miami Herald. “This is something that hit me from left field. Until today, I had no earthly idea this was going on.”

Jeffrey Garcia, 40, declined to comment. He also worked last year on the campaign of Democrat Patrick Murphy of Jupiter, who unseated tea-party Republican congressman Allen West. Murphy has not been implicated in the phantom-requests operation. Read more from this story HERE.

_________________________________________________________

Congressman denies involvement in staffer’s alleged vote fraud attempt

By Gregory Wallace. U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia said Saturday he was saddened and disappointed by absentee ballot fraud allegations leveled against his former chief of staff.

The congressman said at a press conference he asked for the staffer’s resignation and called for fixes to the “flawed voter absentee process” which left the system vulnerable.

Garcia said he demanded the resignation of chief of staff Jeffrey Garcia (no relation, according to local media reports), then fired him shortly after learning of the allegations Friday afternoon.

No fraudulent ballots were cast as a result of this alleged plot, the congressman said.

“I’ve asked an attorney to investigate what went on and interview the people. I have asked all of my staff to fully cooperate with any investigation,” he said. “Here’s the good part about this – from my conversations thus far, no ballots were tampered with, no ballots were touched. Read more from this story HERE.

The Case Of The Phantom Ballots: An Electoral Whodunit

/1 Comment/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Tim Chapman The first phantom absentee ballot request hit the Miami-Dade elections website at 9:11 p.m. Saturday, July 7.
The next one came at 9:14. Then 9:17. 9:22. 9:24. 9:25.

Within 2½ weeks, 2,552 online requests arrived from voters who had not applied for absentee ballots. They streamed in much too quickly for real people to be filling them out. They originated from only a handful of Internet Protocol addresses. And they were not random. It had all the appearances of a political dirty trick, a high-tech effort by an unknown hacker to sway three key Aug. 14 primary elections, a Miami Herald investigation has found.

The plot failed. The elections department’s software flagged the requests as suspicious. The ballots weren’t sent out. But who was behind it? And next time, would a more skilled hacker be able to rig an election?

Six months and a grand-jury probe later, there still are few answers about the phantom requests, which targeted Democratic voters in a congressional district and Republican voters in two Florida House districts.

The foreman of that grand jury, whose report made public the existence of the phantom requests, said jurors were eager to learn if a candidate or political consultant had succeeded in manipulating the voting system. But they didn’t get any answers. “We were like, ‘Why didn’t anyone do something about it?’ ” foreman Jeffrey Pankey said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s DoD at Work: Military Absentee Ballot Requests Drop by Over 90% in Some States

/3 Comments/in , /by

Requests from military voters for absentee ballots have dropped significantly since 2008, according to newly released statistics, prompting claims that the Department of Defense is dragging its feet in enacting a law meant to boost military voting.

The drop in the battleground states of Virginia and Ohio is among the most pronounced. According to statistics released Monday by The Military Voter Protection Project, the number of absentee ballot requests by both military members and other overseas voters in the two states has dropped 70 percent since 2008.

Virginia had nearly 42,000 total requests in 2008, compared with a little more than 12,000 this year, according to the MVP Project. Ohio had more than 32,000 in 2008, compared with 9,700 this year. The number of military voters specifically — as opposed to military and overseas voters — was not broken down in the latest set of statistics, but military-only numbers released by the MVP Project in August documented a similar drop-off in applications.

At the time, military ballot requests in Virginia were down 92 percent. Several other states showed a precipitous drop since 2008, including Alabama, North Carolina and Florida.

Read more from this story HERE.