Tuesday, October 25, 2011

A San Francisco Treat... But Not for Me

I'm not really surprised. One of the reasons I left SF, was because of the political corruption. This sort of thing seemed inevitable:

Voter Fraud Allegations Hit San Francisco Mayor’s Race
Shocking voter fraud allegations are rocking the mayor's race in San Francisco. District Attorney George Gascon has launched an investigation and demands are growing for federal authorities to move in.

One campaign official fears the election could be stolen if nothing is done.

Supporters of incumbent Mayor Ed Lee, who is running for a full four-year term next month, are accused of illegally handling vote-by-mail ballots.

Witnesses say workers for the group, SF Neighbor Alliance, set up a makeshift sidewalk voting site in the city's Chinatown and accuse it of illegally casting absentee ballots for elderly Chinese voters.

The witnesses claim cell-phone videos show workers telling voters to vote for Lee, filling out ballots for the voters and even using a stencil to hide the names of rival candidates so the voters could only chose one -- Lee.

They also say that the completed ballots were stuffed in plastic bags, which is prohibited by state election law.

"At first we thought they were just helping them understand what absentee ballots were," witness Malana Moberg told Fox News, saying that she saw a worker filling out a voter's ballot.

But she said, "It was pretty blatant."

"I noticed that someone who was working at that booth, who had an Ed Lee shirt on, fill in an absentee ballot on behalf of the voter, and I was immediately shocked and couldn't believe that someone would actually fill in the ballot. I thought it was probably illegal, and if not at the very least, unethical," Moberg said, adding that "someone filling out a ballot for somebody else seemed completely inappropriate."

One of videos was shot by Adam Keigwin, a campaign official for State Sen. Leland Yee, one of Lee's opponents.

"Individuals were marking ballots for elderly voters. They would literally mark the ballot, seal it, and put it in bags behind them. There are so many violations there, almost too numerous to mention," he said.

Keigwin told us the alleged ballot stuffing happened right out in the open, for anyone to see. [...]

At least they got caught. This time. But it does shake your confidence when it can even happen so blatantly.

I wish I could say that I'm more confident about Oregon's voting sytem. But I'm not, as I've posted about previously:

Who Elected Kitzhaber as Oregon's Governor?

I think Oregon's voting system is one of the worst there is:

Vote-by-mail's vulnerability to fraud

Oh well. Vigilance must never go out of style, if we're smart.
     

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