- The secretary of state’s office has opened an investigation into a potential instance of voter fraud
- An unidentified woman was seen on camera appearing to take ballots out of a man’s mailbox
- The man was told, when he went to vote in person last week, that he had already voted, which prompted him to check his doorbell camera footage
Officials in Massachusetts are investigating allegations of voter fraud after a woman was caught on camera appearing to remove ballots from a man’s mailbox.
An unidentified man told NBC Boston that last week on Election Day, he went to vote in person at his local polling site in Lawrence and was told that he had already voted.
That strange occurrence prompted him to check his Ring camera footage. After seeing the woman appear to lift his ballot from his mailbox and walk away, he contacted police.
The Essex County District Attorney’s Office and Secretary of State William Galvin have now launched an investigation into the potential voter fraud.
Galvin, who told the outlet that his team immediately opened an inquiry upon being informed of the video, said: ‘We’re going to get all the ballots out of Lawrence, we’re going to get all the mail-in ballots and we’re going to review everything and all the provisionals and reconcile the list, and if further investigation contacting some of the people who allegedly voted by mail needs to be done, we will do it.’
As of Tuesday afternoon – one week exactly following the election – two reports of potential voter fraud have come to light.
‘There may be more. It’s premature to say how many,’ said Galvin.
A second police report was filed by a Lawrence woman, Rosalis González, who is still waiting for elections officials to decide whether to count her in-person or mail-in ballot, the latter of which she says is forged.
‘How come it’s not going to be counted, if I’m voting right in front of you, and I’m telling you that vote you have there is not mine,’ she said.
State election officials continue to sort through these allegations and have promised that results will be delivered before candidates in impacted elections begin their new terms in January.
‘We’re on it. The minute we heard about it we took action,’ said Galvin.
‘We’ve had a history of sending people to jail when they’ve committed crimes. That’s what we’ll do here.’
Because mail theft is also a federal offense, there may also be a federal investigation launched if it is proven to be true that mail was stolen from mailboxes.
Lawrence is a city of roughly 90,000 people, located about 40-minutes north of Boston.
Ring cameras across the country have been catching would-be voters in the act of less-than-civil behavior ahead of local elections.
Last month in Idaho, a doorbell camera captured a local school board candidate nabbing the informational flyers of one of her opponents from a neighborhood porch.
Kristi Hardy was caught on camera stealing a flyer last week out of the door jamb of a neighborhood home, where her opponent had just left his own campaign material.
Zone 2 incumbent and Board Chairman James ‘JD’ Grant had stopped by the Kuna house 20 minutes earlier to leave a campaign flyer for the home’s residents.
Hardy was then filmed brazenly snatching it and replacing it with her own, in what she claimed was a ‘moment of weakness’ after being caught by a doorbell camera.
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Hardy immediately apologized, and her opponent forgave her, saying: ‘I know Kristi. I think she’s a good person and means well. I think she just messed up.’
Grant won the election last week.
source: dailymail.co.uk/footage-stealing-ballots-Massachusetts-mailbox-voter-fraud
