In Jaunary, I wrote about indictments in a New York State election fraud investigation. In a September 2009 Working Families Party primary in Troy, NY, there were allegations of voter fraud. Two Democratic members of the Troy City Council were indicted on 116 charges related to absentee voter fraud.
Now the (Democratic) City Clerk has resigned and plead guilty to a felony as part of the investigation. He is also singing. The Clerk, William McInerney is a Democratic Committeeman, and the police seem to have the goods on him going back to at least 2007, suggesting that this may be a way of life in Troy, NY.
The plea offer made to McInerney, a Democrat, is based, in part, on information compiled by State Police showing McInerney may have helped forge absentee ballots in previous campaigns dating to at least 2007.
McInerney, 47, is a former state Assembly worker who has been a Democratic committeeman in Troy for years. He was appointed to the clerk’s position by the City Council when Democrats took control of the Troy council in January 2008.
Just to emphasize the point: this guy was appointed by the Democrats to run elections in 2008. The cops have him for election fraud back to 2007. So the Democrats appointed someone who knew how to steal elections to run elections.
In January, I noted that there may be something systematic about this, as one of the indicted Democratic officials is also the son of a Democratic official who was convicted of voter fraud. From the Times Union:
For the McDonoughs, this is the second time in 20 years that a family member has been indicted. McDonough’s father, the late Rensselaer County Democratic Party Chairman Edward F. McDonough Jr., was indicted by a federal grand jury, convicted and sentenced to federal prison in 1994 for a municipal insurance kickback scheme that brought him $637,000.
It looks like this McDonough fellow will be a prime target of McInerney’s cooperation:
State Police, in court documents, have said they have evidence that McDonough delivered a bundle of forged WFP absentee ballots to McInerney on the eve of the 2009 primary election.
I would note that absentee voter fraud seems to be the easiest and most common form of voter fraud in our country these days. Today, Taegen Goddard, a Democratic operative, quoted from a book by former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Tom Glaze entitled Waiting for the Cemetary Vote:
“If you want to steal an election, the absentee box is the place to begin, and if you want to calculate the likelihood of fraud in a county, first figure the percentage of its total vote that is cast in absentia.”