[EL] Some background on the O'Hara fraud case in NYC

[Lorraine Minnite]

I ran a Brooklyn City Council primary race in 1991 in which O'Hara was one
of the candidates.  Over the years he was often a candidate for all kinds
of elective office.  This did not endear him to the powers-that-be in
Brooklyn.  The NYC city council had been expanded and redistricted in
1991.  O'Hara wanted to run in a 'new' district (the 38th) where there was
no incumbent and where he thought he'd have a better chance of winning, so
he claimed to have moved in with his girlfriend at the 47th Street address
in Sunset Park.  Our campaign made much of the fact that he didn't really
live there, and he didn't.  My candidate had intended to run against the
Park Slope incumbent - she made that known before the district lines were
drawn, an unavoidable vulnerability given the timing of the line-drawing
and the upcoming primary.  At the last minute, she was cut out of the
district she intended to run in (the new (38th) district line cutting her
out of her contest with the incumbent shot north from Sunset Park, circled
her block and shot back down again), and forced into a primary with eight
other unknowns (she won).

O'Hara was much later convicted on five felony illegal voting counts, and
two felony counts concerning his voter registration at the ex-girlfriend's
address where he registered so he could run in the new 38th.  His case is
interesting because it raises questions about legal interpretations of
voting residency in NYS election law.  I don't know if the claims about no
one since Susan B. Anthony having been prosecuted for illegal voting in New
York are true or not - I believe there are elected officials who have been
prosecuted for not living in their districts, and candidates thrown off
ballots for not living in districts, but the NYS election law experts will
know this better than I do.

Lori Minnite

Posted in Supreme Court <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>
>      Must Read Jim Dwyer NYT Piece on Lone Voter Fraud Prosecution in NYC
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=69767>
> Posted on January 20, 2015 8:03 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=69767>
> by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> Somehow I missed this Jim Dwyer NYT piece
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/nyregion/man-seeks-to-turn-tables-on-officials-in-voter-fraud.html?_r=0>
>  last week:
>
> John Kennedy O’Hara spent most of 2003 picking up garbage in city parks
> and cleaning public toilets as part of his sentence for illegal voting in
> Brooklyn. Also, he had to pay a fine and restitution amounting to $15,192.
> His supposed crime was that he registered to vote using the address of a
> girlfriend on 47th Street in Sunset Park, where he claimed to live part of
> the time. But he also maintained a residence 14 blocks away.
>
> While this sounds like pretty serious punishment for virtually nothing —
> the state election laws are so remarkably elastic on matters of residency
> that a former head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party was actually living in
> Queens during his reign — we cannot be sure if Mr. O’Hara got more than his
> unfair share.
>
> There are, after all, very few people to compare him with.
>
> Practically no one.
>
>     It appears that the last person to be convicted of illegal voting in
> New York State before Mr. O’Hara was the abolitionist and suffragist Susan
> B. Anthony <http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php>, who
> cast a ballot in Rochester in 1872, flagrantly disregarding that she was a
> woman and therefore not allowed to do so. She was not sentenced to pick up
> garbage in the parks, but was fined $100. She never paid.
>
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