[EL] Erie County absentee ballot irregularities

[Jim Gardner]

Dear Colleagues:

For those interested in election fraud: Ever-opaque Erie County, NY, has now produced this item:

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/politics/article620478.ece

What I've been told is that ten or eleven voters in Lackawanna, an older industrial suburb of Buffalo, who requested absentee ballots received them, but the ballots had been already been filled in for one race (the one at the top of the ticket): in the County Executive contest, these ballots had already been marked for Chris Collins, the Republican incumbent.  No other races were affected and the ballots contained no other marks.  The DA's office is now investigating, and somehow finds the evidence thus far collected to be insufficient to charge anyone.  I am not sure why it would be so difficult to figure out how these ballots were marked before leaving the Board of Elections, but many things seem more difficult than one might expect in this county.

As to motive, the leading speculative explanation seems to be that this is an attempt by Democratic insiders to embarrass or discredit Republicans.  It certainly is not a serious attempt to influence the election outcome -- Erie County contains nearly a million people, and 245,000 voted in the County Exec race in 2007.

I will follow up if anything suitably comedic ensues.

Jim

___________________________
James A. Gardner
Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and
Joseph W. Belluck and Laura L. Aswad
   SUNY Distinguished Professor of 
   Civil Justice
State University of New York
University at Buffalo School of Law
Room 316, O'Brian Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
voice: 716-645-2052
fax: 716-645-5968
e-mail: jgard at buffalo.edu
www.law.buffalo.edu
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