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

[Robbin Stewart]

One of several ironies of the John Kennedy OHara case is that John F Kennedy
during his years in congress and the senate was registered to vote from a
Boston hotel room that he did not live at.

How rare does prosecution have to be before someone can make a winning
argument of selective prosecution?



On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 12:12 PM, Lorraine Minnite <lminnite at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>>
>>    [image: Share]
>> <https://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D69767&title=Must%20Read%20Jim%20Dwyer%20NYT%20Piece%20on%20Lone%20Voter%20Fraud%20Prosecution%20in%20NYC&description=>
>>
>>
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