Democrat NY City Coucilwoman Gets on Ballot & Wins Election with 81% Fraudulent Signatures

Blur Brain ^

[Lazamataz]

And the judge lets her off, after she claims she was too trusting of her campaign workers who worked so hard to get those fraudulent signatures on the ballot so she could run for election. But three of her campaign workers take the fall for her. They have been arrested.

From BizPac:

Dem NYC councilwoman’s ‘trusted’ campaign staff indicted on counts of fraud, forgery Some things never change, and corruption in the Big Apple appears to be one of them.

Three campaign workers for Democrat New York City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo were arrested Tuesday and charged with falsifying business records, forgery and offering a false instrument for filing, the New York Daily News reported.

The three workers were paid a dollar for each signature they collected last summer on Arroyo’s re-election petitions. When staffers for Arroyo’s opponent, Julio Pabon, noticed signatures from celebrities like Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter and model Kate Moss, authorities launched an investigation

Insisting that she and her mother, New York City Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, were the first to spot the forgeries, Arroyo told Board of Elections officials at a July hearing that she felt all she could be guilty of was “trusting people too much,” the Daily News reported.

Even though an investigation found a whopping 81 percent of the signatures were invalid, New York Supreme Court Justice John Carter ruled that Arroyo’s name could remain on the ballot, despite what the judge called her “wholesale failure to supervise the petition-gathering process,” according to the Daily News.

Arroyo went on to win the primary and general elections.

Corruption like this is a sign that New York is well on its way to ending up like Detroit, or at the very least, some kind of third world, wasteland. It can happen. It does happen, and I predict, it will happen.

[firebrand]

Between 8 million and 9 million people, could be part of it. The elections are enough of a burden for the Board of Elections, with everyone obliged to work overtime. If they had to verify the signatures, we’d never get around to the actual vote.

The system actually works pretty well. There are piles and piles of designating petitions available for anyone to look at. Nobody makes a fuss unless there is a reason. Of course there are people who take the extra trouble and expense to knock everyone off the ballot except themselves, both members of their own party and members of the other party. Ssshh. I’m not mentioning anyone.

[firebrand]

Yes, Obama did that. We have one or two who do that here, so it’s not a perfect system by any means.

It’s especially hard for the Republicans because they are outnumbered so greatly and they can’t just stand on the street and collect signatures but must call people on the phone and make appointments, gather the signatures at club meetings and other Republican events, or get someone to let them into a building, where they can go around and ring doorbells of Republicans.

I believe someone told me one time that there are only about ten states that require these petitions. I don’t know what makes them necessary—maybe the size and wealth of the population? If we had a fee for people to get on the ballot, we would have about 10,000 candidates.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Remember this is the city of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall