An election fraud mystery has emerged in Maine’s tiny Town of Long Island. The strange case has not only changed the previously announced “winner” of the election, but the contested results affect the entire state Senate and are now the subject of an investigation demanded by the Maine Democratic Party.
On Election Night this year, Democrat Catherine Breen reportedly won the race for state Senate by a very slim 32 votes in Maine’s Senate District 25, according to the then-unofficial tally. However, during a hand recount of the votes last week, 21 previously unaccounted-for ballots were discovered to be in the locked Long Island ballot box. All of the “new” ballots included votes for Cathleen Manchester, the Republican candidate who had requested the recount.
Those 21 “new” ballots were above and beyond the 171 votes counted by hand on Election Night (which proved to be an otherwise perfect count) and the 171 voters listed as having voted on the “voter manifest” at Long Island’s only precinct.
The “new” votes, combined with a few other adjustments to the tallies in the 25th District’s six other towns, were enough to reverse the results, giving an 11-vote victory to the Republican candidate after the recount, even as neither party is able to explain the appearance of the “phantom ballots” in Long Island…
On Election Night, as Steve Mistler reports at the Portland Press Herald, the Democrat Breen barely outpaced the Republican Manchester by a total of 10,930 to 10,898.
After a recount on November 18th, and the surprise appearance of the 21 ballots for Manchester in Long Island, she was certified by the Secretary of State as having won the race by 10,927 to 10,916 — an 11-vote spread.
In addition to the 21 mystery ballots for Manchester, the recount resulted in 9 disputed ballots and “10 missing ballots from Gray and Westbrook,” according to Mario Moretto Bangor Daily News. (Recount tallies, adjustments to them, and challenged ballots are documented here [PDF].)
Without the unexplained 21 votes discovered for the Republican in Long Island, the Democrat would have won the race.
Maine’s Democratic Party has refused to accept the new results and is now seeking a new recount and a subpoena for the Long Island’s Town Clerk, Brenda Singo, “to explain why the official tally on a sealed box of ballots, as well as a voter manifest, differed from the number of ballots inside the box,” according to Mistler at the Press Herald.
The official challenge throws the matter to the Maine Senate to determine who is to be properly seated or how the matter will be otherwise decided. The Republican-majority state Senate will convene a seven-seat panel after it is sworn in on December 3. The GOP will hold four of the seats on that committee which, Mistler reports, “has broad discretion to make a recommendation as it evaluates the results of the recount.”
Moretto at Bangor Daily News reports that Long Island, “a town of about 230 residents, has only one polling place, and Singo was the only warden.” She reported 171 voters on Election Day and has, so far, been unable to explain why 192 ballots were found when the ballot box was unlocked for the recount.
Singo has not immediately replied to a query by The BRAD BLOG.
“Marc Malon, Senate caucus director for the Maine Democratic Party, and Bill Logan, a lawyer representing the GOP, both reviewed the voter manifest on Monday and confirmed in separate interviews that the 21 additional ballots could not be accounted for,” Moretto writes. “The recount on Nov. 18 and Monday’s document review were both overseen by Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn,” who works under Maine’s Democratic Sec. of State Matt Dunlap.
“This type of discrepancy has not occurred in recent memory,” Dunlap said in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon. “It will be up to the Senate to try to discern what’s happened here.”
“The incoming voter list is consistent with the warden’s return of votes cast, showing that 171 Long Island voters submitted ballots in the November 4th, 2014, general election,” said Dunlap, confirming that representatives from his office “opened the sealed voter list of the Town of Long Island to allow the parties to inspect it” on Monday. “The voter list and the 21 ballots for Manchester recorded in the recount but not tabulated on Election Night will be among the materials available for review by the Senate as it resolves the disputed election.”
“Democrats feel burned by the fact that the GOP would not allow any additional investigation,” writes Moretto, “and they are calling on the secretary of state and Senate committee to investigate where the ‘phantom ballots’ came from and whether they are valid. The party also is exploring what legal options are available to ensure there was no election fraud in Senate District 25.”
The paper reports that the Republican attorney Logan downplayed the Democrats’ concerns.
“One could always theorize that something nefarious was done, or that some mistake was made, but it’s just a theory,” he said. “We counted every ballot that we had, counted by a Republican and a Democrat, and the ballots were confirmed by the secretary of state. I can understand why they may be disappointed by the result, but that’s part of a close election.”
Logan went on to speculate that Singo might have failed to check off the names of some voters on Election Day or that there might have been human error during the hand count in Long Island, the only town in District 25 that tallies ballots by hand on Election Night. The Democratic attorney Knox rejected both theories, according to Moretto, who reported she describes the the speculation as “plausible explanations for a discrepancy of one or two ballots, but not 11 percent of all the votes cast in the town.”
On Tuesday, the Daily News reports, Singo said she could not explain why there were more ballots than voters and had never seen a similar situation in the past. “When more questions were asked,” the paper reports, “she said she was uncomfortable discussing the matter any further.”
Among the questions we have sent to Singo ourselves and hope to see answered by the Town Clerk, are how, exactly, hand-counting is done on Election Night in the Town of Long Island; whether the process is fully public; whether or not there were witnesses of the counting that night, as expected; and what the chain of custody requirements are for ballots thereafter.
Human error is always a possibility when hand-counting paper ballots. However, when properly carried out in public, with witnesses checking either other’s work, such errors are very rare. In this case, with the number of ballots counted on Election Night also matching precisely the number of reported voters, a 21 vote “miscount” of the number of ballots seems highly unlikely — at least if appropriate public counting procedures were followed.
In fact, all the other towns in the same District rely on paper ballot optical-scan computer systems made by ES&S (the same ones that failed so spectacularly recently in Stoughton, Wisconsin’s local ballot initiative and many other races over the years) to tabulate their ballots. According to the recount documentation [PDF], other than tiny Chebeague Island, only the Town of Long Island’s Election Night count, by actual human beings, was found to have been perfect during the recount — with the exception of the still-unexplained phantom ballots.
While the mystery remains, for now, and will ultimately be adjudicated by either the Maine State Senate or a court of law, it’s important to note that this does not appear to be a problem that could have been deterred by the type of polling place Photo ID restrictions Republicans are attempting to institute around the nation. There is no evidence at this time that any voter did anything wrong, such as voting twice or in someone else’s name, which is the only type of fraud that could be even possibly be deterred by Photo ID voting restrictions.
If anything nefarious took place in the Town of Long Island — and, for now, that remains a big “if” — it would seem to be an old-fashioned case of ballot box stuffing, a type of election fraud (like almost all types of election fraud) that is not deterred by draconian Photo ID requirements at the polling place.
UPDATE 12/10/2014: MYSTERY SOLVED! Full details now here…
According to Ballotpedia, while Maine provides for recounts, “Maine law does not appear to contain specific provisions allowing for the contest of elections.”
So one has to wonder what remedy, if any, is available to Breen.
If there is an election law attorney who practices in Maine who also reads The BRAD BLOG, perhaps they can enlighten us on the topic.
What “draconian” photo ID requirements?
@BigTim –
Go to lmgtfy.com and type in:
“Republican + Vote Suppression + Voter ID laws”
You’re welcome.
It seems like so few, just 21, but when you figure it’s 10% it’s a freakin’ lot. How can we ever get this voting & counting stuff right?
BigTim @2 asks:
Try reading what 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee, has to say on the topic. Perhaps, then, you’ll understand.
Let’s do some simple math.
Long Island Maine: Population 230 with 176 voters.
FTA: 171 votes hand counted on Election Night.
21 “new votes” were subsequently discovered.
So, according to Brenda Singo, 176 registered voters cast 192 votes?
Isn’t Maine one of the states that allows same day registration? Did anyone register on election day in Long Island? Sixteen anyones?
Having worked an election for Elections Canada, I have to say this sort of “error” (or whatever it is) for paper balloting is incomprehensible – there is just no way you should end up with more ballots than recorded voters. Each registered voter should be crossed off the roll as they receive their ballot(s). Any same-day registrations would be added to the record. I could see one or two not getting crossed off (though even that would sloppy on the part of the poll worker), as Brad said, but not 21 on such a small voting roll. You could have fewer ballots than recorded voters, if someone chose not to return their ballot. But no way should you have more. Let alone 11 percent more.
Of course something nefarious took place:
1. There are more ballots than voters
2. The 21 new ballots are all cast for the same person – In an election that close the odds of that happening is like flipping a coin and having it come up “heads” 21 times in a row.
The question is are the legislators honest enough to do the right thing…
Election fraud, hell we will show you how its done!
Signed: The Republicans
Greg,
This ain’t Canada.
More ballots than voters is all too comprehensible.
Any court that allows such an election to stand simply discredits itself, much as the supreme court of the United States discredited itself with Bush v Gore.
It’ll NEVER happen but full, professional forensic testing and analysis of the 21 “Surprise!” ballots might make for some good reading …
And Brad, you could even start a fund-raiser/”blog betting pool” — Guess the many ways Republicans will try to block that testing & win a gorgeous, near-new Sharpie pen (only used once or 21 times, depending on how you look at it)!
Does she really spell her name with three E’s? If so, she should be disqualified from elected office outright.
Soul Rebel: that photo caption is the only place with “eee”; everywhere else in the article, her name is spelled “Cathleen”.
The only thing that makes Republicans happier than stealing an election is BLATANTLY stealing it, in plain view, and getting away with it. What a rush.
The only mystery is why they would choose a hand-count location to perpetrate the fraud. Might be their local operative was the only one willing to commit a felony. Or it may be simply because it was the most blatant way to do it.
Soul Rebel –
Whoops! Thanks! 3rd “E” now removed. Blame me, not her! 🙂
The redundant “e” is still there in the photo caption.
Carlyle Moulton:
Try hitting “Shift-Refresh” on your browser. Sounds like the old version of the photo may be cached in your browser. Hitting Shift and the refresh button *should* correct that over there.
Rep. Janice Cooper, a Democrat whose House District 47 includes Long Island, and a former counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Impeachment reports that the newly discovered ballots were “21 more than the ‘voter manifest,’ the Election Day check-in list of live and absentee voters on Long Island.”
She suggests that “the state attorney general or the U.S. Attorney should immediately conduct a thorough, independent criminal investigation of the circumstances of this discrepancy, one that involves questioning all relevant witnesses under oath and forensic experts.”
That would appear preferable to a politicized investigation by the state Senate, where Maine’s Democrats suggest “ballot tampering,” and Republicans are already dismissing “the 21 untraceable ballots” as simply “a clerical mistake.”
The only thing worse than criminal Republicans are chicken-sh$t Democratic enablers:
“Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, a Democrat who oversaw the recount, has declined to initiate an investigation and deferred to the incoming Republican-controlled committee, which will have broad discretion as it evaluates the recount results and makes a recommendation to the full Senate on who won the election.”
Matt Dunlap, you are a worthless pile of excrement.
^^What Randy@20 said.