Philly Voting Fraud

02 Nov, 2004 by John Hawkins

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Fraud in Philly? Big suprise there huh?

Before voting even began in Philadelphia — poll watchers found nearly 2000 votes already planted on machines scattered throughout the city… One incident occurred at the SALVATION ARMY, 2601 N. 11th St., Philadelphia, Pa: Ward 37, division 8… pollwatchers uncovered 4 machines with planted votes; one with over 200 and one with nearly 500… A second location, 1901 W. Girard Ave., Berean Institute, Philadelphia, Pa, had 300+ votes already on 2 machines at start of day… INCIDENT: 292 votes on machine at start of day; WARD/DIVISION: 7/7: ADDRESS: 122 W. Erie Ave., Roberto Clemente School, Philadelphia, Pa.; INCIDENT: 456 votes on machine at start of day; WARD/DIVISION: 12/3; ADDRESS: 5657 Chew Ave., storefront, Philadelphia, Pa… A gun was purposely made visible to scare poll watchers at Ward 30, division 11, at 905 S. 20th St., Grand Court. Police were called and surrounded the location… Developing…

Boy, I’d certainly love to know who the votes on those machines were for and how they managed to get votes on all those different machines at all those different addresses…

Hat tip to The Drudge Report for the story.

*** Update #1 ***: RWN reader Shane suggests a plausible explanation for the votes being on the machines that doesn’t involve fraud…

“It is possible that the votes are just what was left over from a demonstration. I do not know for certain in Philly, however I do know that at my junior high we had a chance to vote using actually voting machines the week before the election. It is possible that these votes on these machines were from “mock” elections like these and were not cleared off of the machines when they were returned. Also, these were most likey found during setup of the machines and were cleared before the polls opened.”

*** Update #2 ***: Apparently Rudy Giuliani said he was victimized by this tactic in his first election…

“The Republican mayor told WABC Radio’s John Gambling that at the time his advisors had calculated he’d need 50,000 to 75,000 extra votes just to compensate for Democratic Party fraud in New York City.
When he lost the race by just 42,000 votes, he said, “We had all sorts of claims of voter irregularities.”

“There were machines that already had hundreds of votes on them,” he explained. “When they open that machine – if you don’t have your poll watcher there to look at the back of it, you could start off the election in that district down 100 votes, down 200 votes, down 300 votes.”