Sharpton Charges Fraud in NYC Vote id RAA21501; Thu, 25 Sep 1997 17:15:41 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the October 2, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- SHARPTON CHARGES FRAUD IN NEW YORK VOTE By Pat Chin Brooklyn, N.Y. The Rev. Al Sharpton, a candidate for mayor in New York's Democratic primary, is charging voting fraud and other irregularities and demanding a runoff with Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger. Sharpton's charges have focused attention on a little-known fact: the New York Police Department tabulates election results and releases them to the media. One of the biggest issues in this year's election has been police brutality. Huge demonstrations in August followed the beating and torture of a Haitian worker inside a police station. Sharpton has taken up the issue vigorously. Incumbent mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, is known as a champion of the cops. Now, according to Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, writing on Sept. 22, it turns out that the Police Department made so many "errors" in tabulating the primary vote that the Board of Elections reacted with shock when it received a memo from its staff detailing the discrepancies. The night of the election, it was announced that Messinger had failed to get the 40 percent of the vote needed to avoid a runoff. Sharpton, a civil rights activist with a small budget, came in second with an unexpectedly strong 32 percent. The news stunned both the Democratic and Republican political establishments. Sharpton won the borough of Brooklyn, almost took the Bronx, and was a close second in Queens. In Brooklyn's East New York, a poor community, he won a whopping 71 percent of the tally. But the race was thrown into chaos one week later when Board of Elections Executive Director Daniel DeFrancesco announced that, after a recount that included paper absentee ballots, Mes singer had received enough votes to avoid a Sept. 23 run-off with Sharpton. Her margin of victory was very narrow--only 794 votes. `SOMETHING DOESN'T SMELL RIGHT' "Something doesn't smell right about this recount," said Sharpton that night at a packed rally here in the Bedford/Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. "It doesn't pass the smell test." A lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court the next day by Michael Hardy and Ron Kuby, Sharpton's lawyers. It called for reinstitution of the run-off and argued that the cancellation was based on systematic incompetence on the board's part that tainted the results, violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that gave Black people the right to vote. Citing insufficient evidence, Federal District Court Judge Denny Chin denied the request for an injunction that would have forced the city to hold the run-off. The case is now being appealed in State Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear Sharpton's attorneys. Judge Chin joined a growing chorus of people, including Messinger and even Mayor Giuliani, who have denounced the Board of Elections for ineptitude and inefficiency without demanding that the run-off be held. One Sharpton supporter said, "I think it's the Republican Party and those who are for Giuliani, who are doing this. There are people--who don't want to see this Black man in office--with racist and prejudiced motives, which may encompass a great part of the political forum in New York." The New York election apparatus is welded to the two parties of big business--the Democratics and Republicans. Party bosses make all the decisions involved in running elections. This includes who get to be election commissioners, who sit on the boards, and even who get hired as clerks to count the ballots. The law that governs this entrenched practice of patronage dates back to the state's 1894 constitution and reflected a compromise between the Republican and Democratic parties. Charges have been made that politically-hired poll workers have learned how to jam voting machines, how to delay their delivery and how to come up with the "right" ballots. This is done in precincts likely to go for candidates not favored by party bosses. Now a new charge may be added: that the police deliberately undercounted the votes for both Sharpton and Messinger in order to throw the Democrats into chaos and help Giuliani. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-09.25.97-17:15:51-24285