NJ-GOV: Jon Corzine’s Absentee Ballot Slush Fund

National Review’s Jim Geraghty has a tremendously important story. Jon Corzine is trying to build an absentee ballot slush fund to win a recount in the New Jersey Governor’s race. Basically, the Democratic Party has asked the Secretary of State to send provisional absentee ballots out to people whose signatures on their absentee ballot requests don’t match:

In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.

Now, let’s be clear how the absentee process works in New Jersey. Third parties can pick up and return absentee ballots.  A couple of weeks ago, a Democratic operative in Atlantic City plead guilty to a lesser charge of tampering with ballots. One practice mentioned in the indictment was the person picking up ballots from people and throwing them out if they weren’t for his candidate.  Another example was:

They allegedly solicited applications for messenger absentee ballots from individuals not qualified to receive them and had the voters not fill in the name of the messenger, so they could fraudulently designate themselves as the authorized messengers or bearers.

And:

They allegedly obtained messenger ballots from the county clerk and submitted them to the board of elections as vote s on behalf of voters who, in fact, never received or voted the ballots or, in some cases, were given only the security envelope for the ballot and were told to sign it. Those voters were not given the opportunity to vote in most instances.

So when ballots are getting into the hands of people who didn’t even ask fro them, you have to wonder what is going on.