Immunized Defendant Tells of Absentee Ballot Collections [in FL]

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.

In Orlando area politics, Ezzie Thomas was regarded, correctly, as having developed a personal clientele of voters whom he helped vote by absentee and who followed his recommendations. Was it cash for votes? Yes, in the limited sense that Ezzie Thomas (and others) are for hire by campaigns and corral votes, but there is no evidence or allegation that he paid voters. Thomas apparently did violate absentee ballot handling laws.

Absentee vote collection drives are a common practice among older and poor Blacks but, along with other GOTV methods, are usually done through various pastors, church groups, and so-called voters leagues. Candidates and their supporters who get that support are often expected to pay for the service, which is usually described in campaign reports as GOTV or advertising expense or may be paid off the campaign books, in cash. Sometimes, this also buys "distributed vote fraud" at the precinct level in heavily Black precincts, which is commonly done with the connivance of Black precinct level election officials and an ask-no-questions attitude of central election officials unwilling to get crosswise with the Black community.

Most of the time, Democrats alone are eligible for Black community GOTV and "distributed vote fraud" efforts, so most Republican campaigns do not understand how the system works. As for Ezzie Thomas, Mel Martinez and Glenda Hood were eligible because their elections for Orange County Chairman and Orlando Mayor were nonpartisan and Thomas could sell them to his absentee ballot clientele. Thomas' attorney is now using that to publicly warn the prosecutors that any prosecution using Thomas' testimony will be used to embarrass Martinez and Hood.

Keep this in mind when one hears complaints that Blacks vote Democratic as much as they do because Republicans do not make enough of an effort to court them. In truth, for Democrats, getting the Black vote often requires cash, sometimes paid illegally. For Republicans, even paying the cash does not get equivalent effort, and even reporting it correctly can open them up to embarrassment or prosecution. And not recognizing the seamy persistence of traditional Black GOTV efforts spurs Republican fantasies that Black political dissatisfaction can somehow be translated into changed political allegiances on election day. Old time "'fluence men" are still at work against us.

SOURCE: http://www.conservativeaction.org/resources.php3?nameid=votefraud

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)."

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