BY TIM GAY | Look out for buses filled with people wearing burkas on Election Day.
They may be armed with New York City ID cards, and, along with blacks, Hispanics “and Chinese too,” will be going from poll site to poll site casting fraudulent votes.
“People don’t realize certain neighborhoods, in particular, they bus people around,” noted Alan Schulkin, Manhattan’s Democratic commissioner for the New York City Board of Elections.
These voters could do all sorts of horrible things to throw an election — perhaps even blow up your poll site.
“The Muslims can do that, too,” according to Schulkin. “Your vote gets discounted because they come in with a burka on and your don’t know if they are a voter.”
These thoughts and quotes come from a secretly videotaped conversation with Commissioner Schulkin.
An undercover employee (with no journalistic ethics) from the ultraconservative Project Veritas (www.projectveritas.com) schmoozed Schulkin at the United Federation of Teachers’ holiday party last December. She identified herself as a union consultant. Her secretly recorded video was only recently posted online and first reported by the New York Post on Oct. 11.
Schulkin hasn’t denied or repudiated the video, in which he partially based his fears on New York City’s ID cards for non-U.S. citizen residents: “You can use them for anything,” he said.
Schulkin wants to go back in time prior to the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, and repeal the New York State law prohibiting voter identification.
“Yeah, they should ask for ID,” Schulkin said. “I think there is a lot of voter fraud.”
Perhaps the commissioner should refer to New York State Election Law or read the New York City Board of Elections’ “Policies and Procedures.” The procedure to circumvent such fraud is called the affidavit ballot.
In New York State, if your name is not in the poll list book, or if your right to vote is challenged at the poll site, don’t whip out your ID card and try to grab a ballot. Instead, you can vote by either appearing before a Supreme Court judge and presenting your case, or voting on an affidavit ballot.
The affidavit ballot is for anyone who claims she is properly registered and at the correct poll site for her district.
The voter fills out an affidavit oath form with the same information as a voter registration form — including either the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or the voter’s full eight-digit New York State ID or driver’s license number.
And the voter signs the affidavit oath affirming that everything is true or else the voter can be “convicted and fined up to $5,000 and/or jailed up to 4 years.”
The very first question on the form is “Are you a citizen of the U.S.? If you answer NO you cannot register to vote.”
The affidavit ballot envelop is only opened after the Board of Elections researches the voter’s information — usually no earlier than a week after the polls close. If anything is not correct or incomplete — including checking the U.S. citizen question — the envelope is stamped “invalid,” remains sealed and never counted.
Commissioner Schulkin is also about three to five years behind the times. Voter fraud is essentially a Republican myth, as two recent expensive examples show.
In Iowa, Matt Schultz, Republican candidate for secretary of state, made election fraud one of his top campaign issues in 2010.
After his election, and after an 18-month investigation that cost Iowa taxpayers $150,000, plus salary for a full-time investigator, the secretary of state reluctantly reported that only five cases of voter fraud were uncovered and documented.
Then there is Pennsylvania, which had, for two years, the nation’s toughest and most restrictive voter ID law. Republican Governor Tom Corbett and the Republican-controlled Legislature campaigned hard on voter fraud, and legislation was passed in 2012, in time for the presidential election. The law required voters to present multiple IDs. Naturally, civil rights groups protested and a lawsuit was filed.
Surprisingly, while defending the legal challenge in 2013, attorneys for Pennsylvania admitted there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania,” at any time prior to the law’s passage, and the state had no “knowledge of investigations or prosecutions in other states.”
In other words, Pennsylvania passed a draconian law based totally on fear and prejudice, not fact and practice. Thus, the law was declared unconstitutional in January 2014. Governor Tom Corbett served only one term.
Back to New York City.
The real crime with election fraud is not fraudulent voters. It is voter suppression.
Voter ID requirements, challenging voters and intimidating minorities are just some of the bullying tools used to suppress turnout, and they are usually targeted at the minorities Schulkin noted in the video.
Commissioner Schulkin refuses to back off on his beliefs. On Wed., Oct. 17, he basically thumbed his nose at Mayor de Blasio’s request for his resignation.
Intentionally or not, Schulkin has become a poster fraud believer for Project Veritas. Their Web site features Schulkin’s photo, title and a link to the video noting the New York City Democratic commissioner “…exposes what everyone except the Democrats know to be true; there is a lot of voter fraud.”
Schulkin is now in agreement with Donald Trump’s final campaign push — namely, the ELECTION IS RIGGED.
And, regrettably, Trump is in agreement with Schulkin’s views on fraudulent voting. Shared by many others, this could be the inspiration for heckling, intimidation, perhaps even violence, all in the name of voter fraud.
Trump’s devoted Birthers need no evidence in this apocalyptic post-fact world to be certain that the election is rigged. Donald Trump has told them the truth, that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, Big Wall Street Money and the Media, them Liberals and even the old Republican Insiders are chartering buses right now to haul illegal immigrants and fraudulent voters from poll site to poll site.
But here’s the threatening Election Day problem. Donald Trump’s dying campaign rhetoric is encouraging the true believers to do something — become monitors, look for fraud, keep a vigilant eye on our poll sites.
The mostly white crowds that heckled and taunted any Trump dissenter now have their final, glorious cry of the Alamo. Taunting, threatening, challenging, objecting and possibly fighting anyone who, to a Trump supporter, might look like a fraudulent voter.
On election night, when defeat is inevitable, Trump will still be victorious as the underdog, the victim of election fraud, the maverick hero who shall rise some day soon and Make America Great Again.
According to the Pew Research Institute, one in three eligible voters in 2016 are minorities.
That’s a lot of buses, and a lot of voters to bar from the poll site.
Gay served 12 years as the deputy chief clerk for the New York City Board of Elections and two years as the Democratic deputy commissioner for the Ulster County Board of Elections. He currently divides his time between Chelsea and the Catskill Mountains.
