PA GOP, Dems hurl vote fraud allegations
The polls throughout Pennsylvania were still hours away from opening and email and phone lines were buzzing with allegations of voter fraud from both Republicans and Democrats.
UPDATE - The Community Voters Project (CVP) sent an email moments ago saying the accusations in the story about shredded GOP voter registration forms posted on Breitbart.com care are false.
"Mike Flynn's story is, as he notes – based on garbage," said Brad Martin, spokesman the nonpartisan voter registration program. "As a part of our quality control system all voter registration forms are photocopied and secured under lock and key before the actual form is turned in to the county registrar. In making photocopies of forms, a number of the photocopies were poor quality or unusable. It appears that by digging through our garbage Mr. Flynn acquired these photocopies which were shredded
The polls throughout Pennsylvania were still hours away from opening and email and phone lines were buzzing with allegations of voter fraud from both Republicans and Democrats.
A voter in Harrisburg, where Democrat Rob Teplitz and Republican John McNally are duking it out for an open seat in the state Senate, said they received a mailer on Monday purportedly from the Department of State telling them that they have to show an ID to vote.
The mailer, with the image of a woman holding an ID with the headline "If you want to vote show it," is similar to the one sent out by the agency between Sept. 17 and 24, before a Commonwealth Court judge ruled that no ID was needed for this election.
"There are no other confirmed droppings but it seems very suspicious it would drop in the most competitive state senate race this year," said Aren Platt, executive director of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee. "I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but this is a time when everyone moving armies of people to win votes."
Department of State spokesman Ron Ruman said he only heard about the issue from reporters late last night.
"We certainly didn't send it," said Ruman, adding the department is looking into it.
He said if indeed the mailer was falsely sent out to voters that would be mail fraud, which is a federal crime and investigated by the U.S Postal Service.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Republicans issued an email last night alleging that GOP voter registration forms were being shredded in Philadelphia. They sent a piece from the conservative website Breitbart.com that reported someone found shredded voter registration forms from Republicans in a trash bag outside the office of the Community Voters Project , a voter registration group that focuses on registering minorities.
Ruman said he had not yet heard of that reported incident.
The inquirer is looking into it. Stay tuned.
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