Absentee ballot tricks in NC...and shades of some in Wisconsin?

One of the few post-election stories that might be crazier than the lame duck shenanigans in Wisconsin is this story in North Carolina, where certain GOP tricks have caused one last House race from being called.

As North Carolina officials investigate allegations that absentee ballots were tampered with in a tight congressional race, a review of some of those ballots revealed many were signed by the same small group of people -- some of whom are connected to a longtime operative working for the Republican candidate's campaign.

North Carolina requires witnesses to sign absentee ballots. Usually, those witnesses are family members or friends.

But a set of 161 absentee ballots for the 9th Congressional District obtained by CNN on Monday showed that the same nine people signed at least 10 absentee ballots each.

Many of those nine people who signed ballots seem to know each other, checks of public records and their social media accounts showed. Some are also associates of Leslie McCrae Dowless, a longtime North Carolina operative who worked for the campaign of Mark Harris, the Republican who leads the race by 905 votes.

A CNN review found three witnesses signed more than 40 ballots each, another signed 30, and three other people signed more than 10 apiece. North Carolina election law states only the voter or a near relative can hand in an absentee ballot.

Joe Bruno of WSOC in Charlotte has had a series of reports on the scandal, and got a woman to admit on camera what they did as part of the scheme. She didn't know she was doing anything wrong or illegal - she was just doing a job and picking up ballots to give to Dowless, who apparently did whatever he wanted with them.



As I've heard the details emerge about the GOP's fraud in NC-9, I was reminded of this interview from Greg Palast in October 2012, as he was promoting his book “Billionaires and Ballot Bandits.” Palast told of a eerily similar story in Wisconsin during the recall election of 2012.

…The secret is called Themis. Themis is the Koch Brother’s magical vote munching machine. It’s a data mining operation. It does two things. It’s capable first of something that’s creepy but legal. They fill out ballots for their own voters, mail them and tell them to sign it. It’s all perfect so they’re beyond challenge. So their voters are all taken care of basically, they’ve already been voted for if they sign.

Then, the Themis machine is capable of doing all the caging, all the challenging, the purging, and the blocking at the polls to keep away the voters. For example, if I went by the Brennan Center numbers, and these are experts and therefore no one listens to them, but if you do listen to the screaming, screeching, buried experts, 97,000 Wisconsinites, almost all of them students, were barred from voting because they lacked state ID. Even though they had state student ID, that’s not state ID.

But that wasn’t enough for the Themis machine. The Koch Operation, Americans for Prosperity, had its Chief set up a front called United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. United Sportsmen of Wisconsin, which appeared and then instantly vanished after the recall vote, using the Themis machine, were able to identify likely Democratic absentee voters in key recall areas. Because there were also votes, by the way, on legislatures. The Themis machine was able to get the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin to identify Democratic voters, send them letters saying here’s where you mail in your ballot, and here’s the deadline. The address was a phony, it was their own, and the date was after the legal date for submitting an absentee ballot. So, either way, you were fucked like a duck. The Sportsmen basically were hunting Democrats. That’s how it worked. And again, as Bobby Kennedy says – he’s Dean of Law School at Pace University – this is a crime. And it’s a double crime when you add in the fact that most of this is racially targeted.

And if you didn’t fill in the blanks on that absentee ballot, it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that someone in Koch-land might fill in the right(-wing) ones in for you.

Sure makes you wonder if the “great WisGOP turnout machine” might be related to this tactic, doesn’t it? I’d love to find out how many GOP operatives comb Wisconsin nursing homes and other residences trying to “help” seniors and others in certain areas vote. And you’re damn right I’m going there.