'Dirty deeds!' NYC Republicans accused of 'classic case of ballot stuffing'

Prosecutors in New York are investigating an alleged case of election fraud that took place in a Republican city council primary in New York City.

According to The New York Times, "After a second day of hand recounting on Friday, George Sarantopoulos, a businessman, led Richie Barsamian, chairman of the Republican Party in Brooklyn, by a mere 16 votes in the GOP primary in District 47." This follows "the late discovery of 22 paper ballots that officials said were not scanned by the voting machines on election night," at least 21 of which had been cast for Barsamian.

"The surprise comes on the heels of a report in The New York Post that two absentee ballots were cast by voters who are dead and another by a man who said he did not vote and has no primary voting history going back to the 1980s," said the report — with one of the dead voters having been born 107 years ago.

“This is a classic case of ballot stuffing, where one or more bad actors attempted to mix in 22 fake ballots with legitimate votes,” said Aaron Foldenauer, an attorney representing Sarantopoulos. “Sadly, these 22 fraudulent ballots are just the tip of the iceberg.”

Democratic City Councilman Justin Brannan, who is retiring from this competitive seat after being term-limited and whose aide, Kayla Santosuosso, will face the winner of the GOP primary in the general election, said of the developments, “Dirty deeds like this only serve to erode trust in democratic institutions and the electoral process. Voter fraud is a serious crime and there is every reason to believe this crime was orchestrated by the Kings County Republican Party to benefit their boss who was on the ballot.”

While ballot fraud — often used by Republicans around the country as a reason for passing ever-more restrictive laws on access to voting altogether — is uncommon, it has been known to happen in some high-profile cases.

One of the most serious schemes in recent years was a North Carolina congressional race in 2018, where political operative Leslie McCrae Dowless was found to have illegally harvested and tampered with absentee ballots on behalf of the Republican candidate.