What Does a Corrupt Election Look Like?

And how to do you prove it?

Votes Don’t Go Backwards

On June 23rd, the last night of Early Voting in the June Primary in New York City, I was a nonpartisan election observer at a location called P.S. 175.

This was part of the SMART Elections, Election Protection Program that we have been running for 5 years in New York State, and are expanding now across the country.

I performed our standard procedures. As soon as voting ended I went to each sign-in table and wrote down the number of voters who had signed-in to vote at each table. It was 5:02 pm.

There were three regular voter sign-in tables.

Table 1: 434 voters

Table 2: 434 voters

Table 3: 487 voters

This next part is directly from my notarized statement in our lawsuit:

“At 5:06 pm, I went immediately to the voting machine scanners and took down the number of ballots that had been scanned. There were three voting machine scanners at this Early Voting location. They were labeled Scanner A, Scanner B and Scanner C. I wrote down both the Public Counter and the Protective Counter that was on each voting machine scanner.”

Let’s get some definitions here for you:

• The Public Counter - has the number of ballots scanned during the current voting period.

• The Protective Counter - has the number of pieces of paper (ballots) that have been scanned during the life of the voting machine scanner. (Like the odometer on a car).

• Both numbers are useful.

• Both numbers are easy to see on the ES&S DS 200 front voting screen (the standard voting machine currently in use in New York City).

I also wrote down the serial number for each voting machine scanner. The serial number is just what it sounds like, an individual number that is assigned to each voting machine. There is a label on the voting machine in a number of places with the serial number.

• Scanner A - NY1323

• Scanner B - NY0122

• Scanner C - NY1325

In New York City, each scanner has a booklet, where the Protective Counter (odometer number) is entered at the start of each day, including the first day of Early Voting.

I looked at:

• Scanner A: Protective Counter numbers from the start of Early Voting for this scanner: 12,763

• Scanner A: Protective Counter numbers from the end of Early Voting for this scanner: 13,200

Scanner B: Protective Counter numbers from the start of Early Voting for this scanner: 12, 515

Scanner B: Protective Counter numbers from the end of Early Voting for this scanner: 6,708

• Scanner C: Protective Counter numbers from the start of Early Voting for this scanner: 13,308

• Scanner C: Protective Counter numbers from the end of Early Voting for this scanner: 13,743

Notice anything odd about Scanner B?

The end of Early Voting has less votes than the beginning of Early Voting. Votes aren’t supposed to go backwards, only forwards. So I knew something was off.

I now was told that the original Scanner B broke down during Early Voting, and so this was a replacement Scanner B. That’s why the numbers didn’t match. Fair enough. That makes sense.

They pointed me toward another scanner on the far right side of the room, and said that was the original scanner B. So I went to look at that scanner.

Three Scanner B’s

I looked at the final Protective Counter on the voting machine they were calling the original Scanner B.

The final Protective Counter (total ballots scanned in the life of the scanner) was 6,666. But remember the original Scanner B started with a Protective Counter of 12,515 ballots. How could the count go backwards, so that now it only had 6,666 ballots scanned on it? This Scanner B had the same problem as the replacement Scanner B.

So this Scanner that they were calling the original Scanner B, was also not the original Scanner B.

I looked around and saw that next to the Scanner they were calling the original Scanner B was another Scanner, just sitting there, not being used, and with a cover on it. I asked the technician what Scanner that was, and was told that was also Scanner B.

Now there were three Scanner B’s.

In my affidavit to the court I say, “I have never seen something like this in the years that I have been observing elections in New York City.”

16 More Ballots Than Voters

The scanner they were calling the original Scanner B had 81 votes on the Public Counter.

81 votes had been scanned on that voting machine, during this election (before it broke down) during the course of Early Voting.

I added up the ballots that had been scanned during Early Voting. This is one of the main reconciliation techniques that we use in our election observation program. We compare the number of voters who sign in with the number of ballots scanned.

At the end of the day, voting is about basic math. Each voter has 1 vote. Each vote is cast on one ballot. There have to be the same number of voters and ballots, or something is wrong.

Sometimes a few voters leave without casting ballots, so you might have a couple more voters sign in than ballots scanned. But there is never a good reason for the opposite scenario: for there to be more ballots scanned than voters who sign in.

I added up the voters who signed in at each table for Early voting (Table 1, Table 2 & Table 3)

434 +

434 +

487

_____

= 1355 voters signed in to vote at this location during Early Voting.

I added up the ballots scanned:

Scanner A: 437 ballots

+ Scanner B: (before it broke down) 81 ballots

+ Scanner B: (the replacement after the first Scanner B broke down) 418 ballots

+ Scanner C 435 ballots

_____

= 1371 ballots

1371 ballots - 1355 voters = 16 more ballots than voters.

There are never supposed to be more ballots than voters, so, between that and the three Scanner B’s, I started to suspect that something was amiss.

The Board of Elections Does Not Seem to Understand the Problem & Is Not Concerned

This is again from my affidavit in the court case:

“I went immediately to Miss Brenda [the site coordinator] and told her there were more ballots than voters and that it was a problem. At approximately 5:35pm she called the Board of Elections on her cell phone and put it on speaker phone so I could hear. We were speaking to Miss Rose Ng, and Miss Shakira Williams. We told them that there were 16 more ballots than voters and they did not seem concerned. They said it was because some voters had probably left without voting. I said that in that case there would be less ballots than voters, not more. They told me to call the Poll Worker Department on Monday and gave me the phone number. I believe they instructed Miss Brenda to finish closing the poll site.

There was no explanation found or given for why there were more ballots than voters.”

No Reconciliation of Voters to Ballots

Again, from my affidavit,

“I asked one or more of the poll workers if it was part of their reconciliation process to compare the number of voters who voted with the number of ballots scanned. They said no.”

This appears to be the case. In the ensuing months, we have found no evidence that NY statute requires the poll sites to match the number of voters with the number of ballots cast. This is a major flaw (or perhaps a deliberate omission) in the New York statutes. Remember that the New York statutes came out of Tammany Hall.

Cash to Poll Workers, Illegal Electioneering & Statistically Significant Irregularities

In the months that followed, I attended the 3% hand-count audit of this election and interviewed many of the candidates and their staff. We also did statistical analysis on the election results and here is what we found: From the press release when we filed our lawsuit,

New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - October 29, 2024) - SMART Elections and its Co-founder and Executive Director, Lulu Friesdat, are lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Thursday, October 17th, against the New York City Board of Elections (NYCBOE). The legal action depicts gross irregularities in the handling of voting equipment and ballots, reports of bribery, a lack of notification to some voters, and rampant illegal electioneering in the June 2024 New York Democratic Primary Election in Assembly District 70. The election included a highly competitive race for an open seat in the New York Assembly, representing Harlem and parts of the Upper West Side. These findings raise serious concerns about the legitimacy of the election and the certified results. The lawsuit calls for a new supervised special election.

This election was for a hotly contested seat in a Democratic Primary. We have the same concerns here that we have about the 2024 Presidential and Senate elections.

Our concern is that the election has been corrupted, the voters’ intent subverted and a candidate elected that was not the one chosen by the voters.

Oral Arguments for This Case Are April 23rd at 11:30am

They will be online, and we encourage you to attend.

Link to follow.

We will be going into more detail about this case in the next 10 days before the hearing.

Keith Wright, the Chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party, is shown here illegally electioneering in a video submitted as evidence in our case.

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