Illegal Ballots In New Square Vote: Clinton Supporters Didn't Live in Town!
Source: New York Daily News
Published: 4/25/01 Author: GREG B. SMITH
Rockland County Hasidic community's overwhelming vote for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was tainted by irregularities, a Daily News investigation has found.
In more than two dozen cases, Village of New Square voters who cast ballots were not properly registered there, The News found.
The cases included people whose names had been blacked out of the voter rolls in September's Democratic primary because officials determined that their actual residences appeared to be in Brooklyn, Orange County or as far away as London.
But they voted in the November election anyway.
The highly organized community of New Square voted for Clinton over GOP Rep. Rick Lazio by a stunningly lopsided tally of 1,400 to 12 — which represented an amazing 82% of the registered voters in New Square.
It also was a dramatic 31% increase from the last senatorial election, when 1,000 votes were recorded.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White is investigating whether New Square's unusual vote for Clinton was tied to clemency granted by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to four New Square leaders convicted of stealing tens of millions of dollars from anti-poverty programs.
As prosecutors continued their probe, The News examined whether those one-sided results were inflated by illegal votes.
The News found that before the September primary, local officials determined that 53 voters said they lived at a single New Square address — the yeshiva at the center of the fraud scandal.
All but eight were kicked off the voter rolls, but 26 cast ballots in the general election.
Several other New Square voters appeared to have current addresses in Hasidic communities in Brooklyn; Monsey in Rockland County and Monroe in Orange County.
Questions about New Square votes emerged in September, when a local judicial candidate contested the 53 voters who were registered as living at Yeshiva Avir Yakov in New Square.
That's the school where tens of millions in Pell Grants were illegally funneled by the four New Square men who received clemency from the ex-President.
At the request of Rockland County Elections Commissioner Ann Marie Kelly, Ramapo Police Detective Greg Dunn visted the yeshiva.
Charles Bludman, the school's director, told Dunn that of the 53 contested voters, 12 adults who were eligible to vote resided at the address. Days later, the number was reduced to eight.
School officials told Dunn the rest lived elsewhere, including 12 from Brooklyn, three from Monsey, three from England and one from Canada.
The others could not be located, though they were registered to vote in Rockland County.
The eight who Bludman said lived at the yeshiva were students, but questions arose about whether even these eight could claim the school as a primary residence.
Kelly said a mail drop at the village hall used by some students indicated that the school was not their primary address: "It's a very, very questionable matter."
Just before the primary, officials literally blacked out 24 names off the voter rolls. But they didn't cross any of the names off the rolls for the general election.
As a result, at least nine of the 24 blacked-out voters were able to vote anyway.
In all, 26 of the 53 voters with suspect addresses cast ballots in the general election, according to a review of computerized elections records and interviews with local officials.
The News' inquiry prompted Rockland County officials two weeks ago to permanently knock the 26 questionable voters from the yeshiva off the rolls, Kelly said.
The law says voters must register according to their primary residence, the place where they sleep during the majority of the year. They also must be U.S. citizens.
Bludman declined to say how many students attend the school or how many live there.
He said he did not know why some students use the village hall as a mail drop, asking, "Is it my business? I don't ask you how much money you make."
The matter, he said, was closed. "We're done," he said. "Nobody
every came back to me and said, 'Bludman, you're doing things incorrectly.'
Why ask for trouble?"
HENCH adds: Who's surprised? The witch and her husband have lived on vote fraud and graft for the last twenty years, funded by the lowest form of corrupt life, the Democrat party.
More HenchPAC News
To leave HENCH a message, comment, or link: