Posted on 01/09/2005 11:27:18 AM PST by TaxRelief
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A campaign consultant said he was hired by several Florida politicians over the past seven years to gather absentee ballots during their elections, a violation of state law.
Ezzie Thomas, who has been granted immunity, told prosecutors that he was paid numerous times since 1998 to gather absentee ballots, most recently by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer's (Dem) campaign last year, his attorney said Friday.
Thomas told prosecutors four months ago that he was hired to do similar work for U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez (Rep) when he ran for Orange County chairman in 1998, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood's 2000 campaign for Orlando mayor, and two other minor campaigns.
Florida made it illegal in 1998 to pay or accept money "for distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting, delivering or otherwise physically possessing absentee ballots." The law was passed after the 1997 Miami mayor's race was marred by allegations of absentee ballot fraud.
Dyer, a Democrat, received just over 50 percent of the vote in his re-election last March as Orlando mayor, barely enough to avoid a runoff. His main opponent, Ken Mulvaney, filed a lawsuit after the election seeking to have the results thrown out. The lawsuit remains unresolved.
Dyer and other politicians have never denied hiring Thomas, but campaign finance reports for Dyer's campaign indicate Thomas was paid to perform general "get-out-the-vote" efforts.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
PING
PONG
Thought this was a flu thread.
The admin moderators don't let you change the headlines.:-)
On this year's absentee ballots the witness signature has been replaced with affidavit language and the threat of prosecution for voter fraud. I'm sure the Democrats will try to get this thrown out as entrapment.
And Floridian ballot corruption hits just keep ooonnnn coming. No wonder the demoncRATS were lined up and up in arms to ensure that "every" ballot was counted in FL. They're experts in election tricks pulled off that the rest of US didn't know.
The legislature changed the law in 1998, he was elected in 1998 to the Orange Co. Commission. Not sure if the law had taken effect at the time the election occurred.
How Democrats Steal Elections - Top 10 Methods of Liberal Vote Fraud
1. Over-Voting. In Democrat strongholds like St. Louis, Philadelphia and Detroit, some precincts had 100% of their registered voters voting, with 99% of the ballots going to Gore. Clearly, multiple voting resulted in extra tallies for Gore in the 2000 election. (New York Post, 12/09/00).
2. Dead Voters. This classic Democratic method of vote fraud goes all the way back to 1960 in Chicago and Dallas. The 2000 election was no exception. In Miami-Dade County, for example, some of the 144 ineligible votes (those which officials actually admitted to) were cast by dead people, including a Haitian-American who's been deceased since 1977 (Miami-Herald, 12/24/00).
3. Mystery Voters. These "voters" cast votes anyway but are not even registered to vote. In heavily Democratic Broward County, for example, more than 400 ballots were cast by non-registered voters. (Miami-Herald 1/09/01)
4. Military ballots. Many of these votes were disqualified for the most mundane and trivial reasons. At least 1,527 valid military ballots were discarded in Florida by Democratic vote counters (Drudge Report, 11/19/00).
5. Criminals. Felons are a natural Democratic voter and they're protected on voter rolls across the country. In Florida at least 445 ex-convicts - including rapists and murderers -- voted illegally on November 7th. Nearly all of them were registered Democrats. (Miami-Herald 12/01/00)
6. Illegal aliens. These voters have long been a core liberal constituency, especially in California. In Orange County in 1996, Rep. Bob Dornan had his congressional seat stolen from him when thousands of illegal aliens voted for Loretta Sanchez (Christian Science Monitor, 9/2/97).
7. Vote-buying. Purchasing votes has long been a traditional scheme by Democrats, and not just with money. In the 2000 election in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Democratic workers initiate a "smokes-for-votes" campaign in which they paid dozens of homeless men with cigarettes if they cast ballots for Al Gore (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 11/14/00).
8. Phantom Voters. These voters don't really exist, but their ballots do. In the 1996 Lousiana Senate race, GOP candidate Woody Jenkins had the election stolen from him when he discovered that 7,454 actual votes were cast but had no paper trail to authenticate them (Behind the Headlines, F.R. Duplantier, 4/27/97).
9. Dimpled chads. Those infamous punch-cards were a ballot bonanza for Al Gore. Democratic poll workers in Palm Beach, Dade and Broward counties tampered and manipulated thousands of ineligible ballots and counted them for Gore, even though no clear vote could be discerned. (NewsMax.com 11/27, 12/22, 11/18, 11/19/00).
10. Absentee ballots. Normally it's assumed that Republicans benefit from absentee ballots. But in the case of Miami's 1997 mayoral election, hundreds of absentee ballots were made for sale or sent out to non-Miami residents. Fraud was so extensive in the race that the final results were overturned in court (FL Dept. of Law Enforcement Report, 1/5/98)."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=votefraud
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=electionfraud
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