An incident report of voting irregularities and fraud that needs to be heard
By Phil Orenstein
Queens Village, NY – The American people are demanding free and fair elections. Election integrity is an issue that affects candidates and voters of all parties who have lost their trust in an institution that’s supposed to deliver honest and transparent results. Voters won’t come out to vote if they fear their votes won’t count.
This is the voting incident story of Aura Moody, one of the many cases of voting irregularities and fraud experienced in recent elections. Aura is a proud outspoken Black-American Republican, who has been reaching out to fellow citizens to vote Republican for the future of our beloved USA.
Aura changed her voter registration from Democrat to Republican in December 2020. She had been voting at her usual poll site, PS 118Q in St. Albans, Queens for years. But the Primary Election on June 22, 2021, was to be her first Republican primary, in which she would vote for the Republican candidates of her choice for public and party offices, including the mayoral candidate.
Aura signed in at her ED table at her poll site and the poll worker handed her a ballot. But as soon as she noticed that it was a Democrat ballot, she asked for a Republican ballot and was met with apparent disbelief. Aura explained she had switched parties after realizing that the Democrat Party had been hijacked by the radical left in 2020, and that her former party no longer represents her conservative values. The poll worker just stared at her doubtfully, since her neighborhood is mostly Democrat.
Aura then demanded to speak with a supervisor in order to vote with the correct ballot. However, the supervisor responded that she had already voted, which was patently false. Aura protested insisting that she had not voted yet and demanded, “I want my vote to be counted.” We may never know how many unwitting Republican voters might have inadvertently voted on the wrong ballot or not spoken up as Aura did.
Aura continued to protest and demanded to speak to a person of higher rank. The supervisor finally recanted and told her she could vote as a Republican, and Aura was handed a Republican ballot and was able to cast her vote.
The story continues with allegations of blatant voter fraud. Last year, Aura received four unsolicited absentee ballot applications in the mail for people who have not lived at her home address in St. Albans for at least 20 years. According to voter data, two of them voted in recent elections using her address. Also, Aura moved 20 years ago from Jackson Heights, but someone has been voting in her name from that address every year. Incidents like this could have been averted if voter identification was required and the voter rolls were cleaned. A reform of the voter system in New York is warranted!
Aura contacted the NYC Board of Elections and NYS GOP to report these incidents and allegations of fraud. She carefully documented her incident report as well as allegations of voter fraud with ample evidence, and followed it up with calls and emails, but it fell on deaf ears without even an acknowledgement, as so often is the case.
One of the leading causes of low voter turnout is loss of confidence in our election system. Combined Democrat and Republican voter turnout for the June 22nd primary was a pathetic 23%. In the past, voter turnout used to be over 50%, but in last mayoral election, the turnout was 24%, where in the final tally, a mere 8.5% of New Yorkers voted for de Blasio!
Everyone knows the system is corrupt, so why bother to vote? It stems from party bosses, only interested in keeping their power, working together with Board of Elections officials to keep outsiders out, regularly knocking them off the ballot. In the case of the recent primary, Democrats allowed many newcomers to run, but the Republicans knocked their own party candidates off the ballot. 31 Republican Patriots candidates were thrown off the ballot for “inconsequential and innocent” technicalities and spent four months before the primary defending themselves in the NYS court system battling expensive lawsuits brought by Queens Republican Party leaders.
Our election system is a relic of Tammany Hall days, when Boss Tweed famously said, “I don’t think there was ever a fair or honest election in the City of New York.” Faith in the system declined after the NYC Board of Elections recently botched the preliminary ranked-choice voting calculations and mistakenly added over 130,000 test votes to the original ballot count.
“Democrats are now experiencing what all voters have experienced, the lack of ballot integrity,” said Curtis Sliwa at an election integrity press conference demanding to simplify the voting process and dissolve the NYC Board of Elections.
Ranked-choice voting, which did nothing to improve turnout and voter confidence, is another farce, since results don’t come out until weeks later. Voters say ‘why vote’ when it takes so long to get the results.
It starts with reforming our local NYC Board of Elections. Today, it starts with ending the partisan patronage system of the BOE which leads to cronyism, nepotism, conflicts of interest, and voter suppression.
We’ve heard the many news stories of ineptitude and corruption of the election system, including the fraudulent disqualification of 84,000 mail-in ballots before the 2020 Democrat presidential primary, as well as the 54,000 Brooklyn voters who mysteriously vanished before the primary between Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders. The establishment Democrats rigged the system to stop Bernie Sanders, and the same thing happened to Republicans. The corruption of power affects us all.
But, we’ve hardly heard about the innumerable cases of voting irregularities, fraud, and intimidation, from individual voters like Aura’s case. These are the many unheard stories of voters who were harassed, given incorrect ballots, instructed to vote down the Democrat Party line, and votes from the deceased, from non-citizens, from those who have moved, and hired operatives voting multiple times. This must change for there to be free and fair elections. Is this incompetence or systemic corruption? Or are they protecting a rigged voting system harkening back to Tammany Hall?
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Phil Orenstein is the president of the Queens Village Republican Club. Established in 1875, it is America’s oldest Republican Club. www.QVGOP.org.
