Ballot Fraud Forces New Election
Evidence of mail-in ballot fraud in the Bridgeport, CT mayoral race spurs judge to call for new election. Plus updates from ID, GA, NY, AZ and around the country.
The story first broke several weeks ago as a video surfaced of campaign workers for candidate Joseph Ganim stuffing ballots into multiple drop boxes. Ganim won the race against John Gomes (pictured) by 251 votes and the absentees by 703 votes.
An investigation led to a court case and on November 1st, Judge William Clark decided that the evidence was convincing enough to call the election in doubt and ordered a new election be held.
Convenience voting is no substitute for civic engagement.
What happened in Bridgeport is not an anomaly but at the very center of why people don’t trust our elections. The chain of custody of absentee and mail-in ballots cannot compare with that of in-person voting, opening up our elections to fraud. Bridgeport is just the latest example.
Prior to the 2020 election, Heritage spotlighted four court cases that overturned election results due to absentee fraud. Several of the people involved in those cases stated that it had been going on for many elections.
Two women who ran for office in separate cities in Florida both blew the whistle on ballot harvesting scams (discussion in video starts at 4hr 14min mark) in their elections last year and again stated that it was common in their communities. One of them was able to obtain video of a ballot harvester as well as testimony from several vulnerable voters who were swindled out of their ballots.
The Sheriff of San Joaquin County in California investigated and arrested a candidate who falsely registered and voted on behalf of vulnerable voters in his election. The Sheriff noted that the process for registering people in California was wide open to abuse. And last week, we also saw absentee and remote registration charges against two separate candidates in New Jersey.
Easy to Vote, Hard to Cheat
This is the mantra, however, we have gone too far on the first part while ignoring the second part. Absentee voting was historically less than 5% of the population but now it is more than 20% and trending upward. The higher the absentee voting percentage, the more susceptible our elections are to cheating.
Here in Idaho, we will again attempt to restore integrity to the voting process through legislation by limiting absentee voting to only those with a valid excuse. That didn’t go very far last session, which is quite surprising in a Republican dominated state as it is a very popular opinion of Republican voters.
Short of legislation, voter education can help encourage people to vote in person, if at all possible, ideally on election day. However, if someone cannot vote in person, then they should avoid handing over their ballot to the USPS and instead hand it over directly to the county clerk.
ID: Copied Ballots Accepted - Canyon County held a Logic & Accuracy test for the upcoming election. Such tests are standard protocol to demonstrate publicly that a known test deck of ballots is tabulated correctly. While the test deck was successfully tallied, it was asked whether the tabulator would reject a photocopy of a ballot. While election workers stated that it would, a test showed that it did not. Tabulation is a two-step process. The first step is the tabulator scans the ballot to create a ballot image. Within this step, there is no mechanism to detect a fake or copied ballot. It is only in the second step where the ballot image is processed via software that checks can occur. For example, both Bonner and Bonneville counties use serialized ballots and would be able to reject a ballot if the serial# had already been scanned or was missing or was not a valid number. This topic was discussed at a Canyon Commissioner meeting in the wake of the controversy (around the 27 min mark). While it is currently up to each county to decide, Secretary of State Phil McGrane has expressed concern that serialized ballots may conflict with Article 6 of the State Constitution that guarantees ballot secrecy.
US: Congress Requests ‘Smurf’ Info from ActBlue - House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil sent a letter to ActBlue requesting details surrounding their processes for accepting donations. Last week’s substack explored the role of both ActBlue and WinRed and what appear to be illicit donations tied to unwitting elder citizens.
GA: Trump Co-Defendant Pleads Not Guilty - Amidst the several guilty plea bargains in the Trump trial in Georgia, one defendant, Harrison Floyd, has instead stood firm and plead not guilty. His attorneys have subpoenaed for documents from the Fulton County clerk and the Secretary of State that they claim will prove his innocence. A ruling is forthcoming as to whether those documents are to be provided.
US: Trump Gag Order Suspended - A federal appeals court paused the gag order imposed by Judge Chutkan on Trump in the trial where Trump is charged with trying to unlawfully overturn the 2020 election.
NY: Bankman-Fried Guilty - The head of FTX, a crypto currency investment scheme, was found guilty on all seven charges. The article alludes to Bankman-Fried’s role in funding the Biden campaign. Illicit campaign donations were one of the original charges that was subsequently dropped though a colleague (Nishad Singh) plead guilty to campaign finance violations.
AZ: Cochise County Supervisor Subpoenaed by AG - The charges are not specified but VoteBeat reports that it is related to the refusal to certify an election. This matter has come up a few times and the debate centers around whether supervisors or commissioners are required to certify elections they deem problematic.
Thank you, Tim, for another excellent report.
Since you mentioned FTX, your readers may be interested in the following:
10/20/23 10:14 AM: EXCLUSIVE: 13 of 22 RINO Holdouts Derailing Jim Jordan Are Connected to FTX and Voter Mule Donations (The Gateway Pundit): https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/exclusive-13-22-rino-holdouts-derailing-jim-jordan/
Summary: The Former co-CEO of FTX, Ryan Salame, pled guilty early last month to “Conspiracy to Make Unlawful Political Contributions and Defraud the Federal Election Commission and Conspiracy to Operate an Unlicensed Money Transmitting Business.” (https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/statement-us-attorney-damian-williams-guilty-plea-ryan-salame-former-ceo-ftx)
Salame admitted that his job at FTX was to illegally funnel money to Republican politicians and political causes, while his co-conspirator, Sam Bankman-Fried, funneled money to Democrats (https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/09/07/ex-ftx-executive-ryan-salame-pleads-guilty-to-us-criminal-charges/)
Idaho Senator Mike Crapo and Congressman Mike Simpson both received donations from Salame (Crapo $2900, Simpson $5800). Mike Crapo also received $2900 from Sam Bankman-Fried.
Thirteen holdouts who did not supportJim Jordan as Speaker also accepted donations from Ryan Salame – almost all of them maximum donations. Source: FEC RECORD https://www.fec.gov/data/
The Republicans who accepted these funds include:
1. Kay Granger (TX-12th)
2. Mike Simpson (ID-2nd accepted $2900 on 10/9/22 & $2900 on 9/13/22)
3. Carols Gimenez (FL-28th)
4. Jen Higgins (VA-2nd)
5. Marinette Miller-Meeks (IA-2nd)
6. Mike Lawler (NY-17th)
7. Steve Womack (AR-3rd)
8. Mike Kelly (PA-16th)
9. Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-26th)
10. Linda Chavez-Deremer (OR-5th)
11. Andrew Garbarino (NY 2nd)
12. Tony Gonzales (TX-23rd)
13. John Rutherford (FL-5th)