A little late to the party, Patch.com has a fine piece up which ought to be titled, 'Buying Elections for Dummies'.
'Cause the facts are the facts, ma'am.
Instead, Patch calls it, 'Occhipinti Paid 550 workers $40'. No, they didn't all split the $40- EACH of the 550 workers got $40.
The final tally of 4th Ward votes (machine plus VBMs) was:
Occhipinti 1240
Lenz 834
According to Patch:
- Timmy's margin of victory was 406 votes.
- Timmy paid 550 workers $40 each.
- How many of the 550 were 'encouraged' to vote for Timmy, either by VBM or machine?
- What did these 550 workers DO for their $40 'payment- other than (probably) vote for Timmy'? Nobody knows.
According to Patch:
"Everyone that worked for our campaign signed a campaign worker declaration," Occhipinti said. "That's it."
The declaration didn't include any job requirements or state how many hours campaign workers were supposed to work.
According to one political expert, who spoke on background and isn't affiliated with either candidate, it's hard to track down what the campaign workers exactly did for their $40.
"I don't know what kind of definition they're using for workers," the source said. "I am sure they didn't do much."
The notion that a tsunami of helping hands, 550 pairs of hands, that's 11,000 FINGERS --were needed for ONE ward's election is preposterous.
Take Hoboken's 2009 mayoral race.
Dawn Zimmer fought a city-wide race (6 wards) with 153 workers (28% of Occhipinti's workforce). Peter Cammarano had 732 workers (1.3 times Occhipinti's workforce).
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? The stink goes all the way from the Pet Shop on Observer Highway to the desk of Attorney General Paula Dow in Trenton.
Strong denials of wrongdoing are coming from the Occhipinti camp.
One of the VBM 'bearers' (bearers are folks who carry VBMs from the voter to the mailbox or directly to the Board of Elections- 10 maximum at a time) Matt Callichio denies that he offered $40 in exchange for a vote.
Here's an interesting fact about Matt Callicchio: 28.5% of the ballots he 'beared' were rejected by the Board of Elections. Most of the rejected ballots were for non-matching signatures. As in forgery.
Callicchio tells Patch:
"Everything that I did," he said, "was done legal."
Facts don't lie, people... Paula, it's your turn.
Where were all those election "workers"? The 4th Ward isn't that big and I really don't know of anyone who saw even a fraction of Occhipinti's "workers" working on election day.
ReplyDeleteAs late as Patch and the Hoboken Reporter were with their reports about the Occhipinti money and his paid "workers" it is better late than never. Hopefully these reports will remind people that there are still very serious questions that demand answers.
It also makes one wonder how Mason's $13,400K voting pet Occhipinti will fare in May without the same pot of money. The $40 precedent has been set and extended as never before and I can't imagine anything less will be acceptable in May.
I have modified my position on this race.
ReplyDeleteI had originally bought into the machine vote win. But under-votes on machines cast doubt. And it isn't logical to believe that people who bought hundreds of VBMs stopped there. They'd buy machine votes too.
There are 550 $40 "workers". The margin of victory is 406. Which means at least 145 of the $40 workers had to actually be workers and not paid for votes. I'm not buying it. Not from this group.
The STOLE it.
GA think of the bad old days. Before we (oops liberals)decided that in order to achieve greater voter participation we (liberals) need to make it easier and easier. No voter ID (ACLU) it's discriminatory. No reason for absentee or VBM voting and presto we get the 4th Ward results. The rules for challenging votes have also been "eased". As Ravi Bhalla said, voting has consequences. Thank the Dems for this mess.
ReplyDeleteHey Miss Grafix Avenger, I couldn't help bud notice you used an art piece of mine (Man in hot dog bun). I am flattered that you dig it, but I was wondering if you could throw a little "sculpture by Nathaniel Lewis" or at least a link to my page http://www.nathaniellewis.net/ it would be much appreciated. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteHiya, Nathan... sorry for the delay, just got back from a week in Paradise. Well... it wasn't Paradise but it was nice.
ReplyDeleteSorry about that- I found it on Google images. So, I captioned the weenie w/your name.
Your work is cool... I am going to ask my friends on the City Council if they'd consider your "Lawn Tongue" for the lawn in front of Hoboken City Hall. Could we commission you for any other body parts?
Here's that fabulous Lawn Tongue, folks:
http://www.nathaniellewis.net/index.php?/intimator/lawn-tongue/
Nathan, how would you like to be GA's Guest artist sometime?
And here you go:
http://grafixavenger.blogspot.com/2010/10/eat-weenie-at-mikes.html