By Dan Murphy
Westchester residents should prepare for, and get used to, the concept that we will not know who the President -elect will be on the evening of November 3. That is due to the millions of Americans who will cast their votes by absentee ballots because of the Coronavirus that is still spreading across the country and killing 700 every day.
In most US counties, including Westchester, the local Board of Elections will not begin counting ballots until the day after the election. Usually, there are a limited number of ballots to count, but with an astronomical number of additional ballots coming in through the mail and by hand, it could take weeks to count every ballot. Waiting a dozen or so days to see who our next President will be is the least of Americans troubles this election.
The Red Mirage: The political database company Hawkfish, now owned by Michael Bloomberg, issued a report last month which predicted, based on their data, that because more republicans will be voting in person and more democrats will be staying home and voting by mail, on election night, Trump could hold a large lead, but after more and more absentee ballots are counted Biden will take the lead.
Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn said, “We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump,” he said.“When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage,” Mendelsohn said. “It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted.”
But democrats and supporters of Biden need to beware of another fact. Many absentee ballots are not counted every election because of errors in filling out the ballot made by the voter. In New York State alone, more than 10,000 absentee ballots were tossed out this year for the June 23 primaries. Republicans and Trump supporters are hoping that hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots will be tossed out in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, and, as a result, hand the Presidency to Trump for four more years.
Trump advisor Steven Bannon said that 60 million to 80 million voters will cast mail-in ballots in the presidential election, which means “we need to sit there and contest every ballot.”
Bannon also laid out another 2020-21 election scenario. “The mainstream media and oligarchs in Silicon Valley intend to have Facebook, YouTube and Google not declare Trump the winner. Election Week and Election Month to push through to December, and push to [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s House of Representatives in January, when new Congress meets. It’s going to be the equivalent of a civil war when they refuse to declare Trump the president [and say] under no circumstances can Biden concede.”
Phony Ballots: Here in Westchester, and in New York State, a voter is required to request an absentee ballot from their Board of Elections. That request is signed and then dropped off or mailed to the BOE. The BOE then mails back an absentee ballot, or you can pick it up. The voter must then correctly fill out the ballot and mail it back, or return it, to the BOE.
This complicated process is also a proper level of security to avoid having voters cast more than one vote with more than one ballot.
But in other states, absentee ballots are mailed out to every voter on the BOE voter registration rolls. And many voter registration rolls still have voters who have moved or died, on them, resulting in the BOE mailing ballots to addresses where the voter no longer lives.
This gives someone the opportunity to collect those ballots and cast those votes for the candidate of their choice.
In Mamaroneck, one of the country’s most conservative watchdogs is Project Veritas, led by James O’Keefe. Last month, Veritas secretly recorded interviews with democratic political workers who were “collecting ballots” from senior voters in Minnesota.
In the video, which can be found at projectveritas.com, the democratic worker says, “Just today we got 300 for Jamal Osman,” says Mohamed, aka KingLiban1, in the video. “I have 300 ballots in my car right now . . .“Numbers don’t lie. You can see my car is full. All these here are absentee ballots. . . . Look, all these are for Jamal Osman,” he says, displaying the white envelopes.“Money is the king in this world . . . and a campaign is driven by money.”
Mr. Mohamed has since explained that he was collecting ballots from homebound seniors and was making it easier for them to vote. But Minnesota law permits each individual to collect only 3 ballots at a time. Mr. Mohamed later explained that he had exaggerated how many ballots were in his car and that he had 30 and not 300. But even that amount is too many and a violation.
The Veritas video is used by the President and Attorney General Barr as proof they claim, that fraudulent ballots will be used to elect Joe Biden, and that is why they have thousands of election attorneys ready to challenge every absentee ballot. Democrats also have their army of attorneys ready to do the same.
It is this type of political discord that Russia, and President Vladimir Putin, want in our country. A recent NY Times story found that internet hackers paid for by the Russian government were hard at work trying to hack into local Boards of Elections. In 2016, Russian internet agents used Facebook and social media to create “Fake News” about Hillary Clinton and attempted to get democrats not to vote for President. This year they will try the same, but with different methods and tactics. China is also said to be at work, using their technology to help Joe Biden get elected.
Here in Westchester, early voting dates and locations are:
Early Voting Times:
Saturday, October 24: 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 25: 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Monday, October 26: 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 27: 12:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Wednesday, October 28: 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Thursday, October 29: 12:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Friday, October 30: 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 31: 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 1: 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Early Voting Locations:
Eastchester Public Library, 11 Oakridge Place, Eastchester
Dobbs Ferry Village Hall, 112 Main Street, Dobbs Ferry
Greenburgh Town Hall, 177 Hillside Avenue, White Plains
Veterans Memorial Building, 210 Halstead Avenue, Harrison
Pound Ridge Town House, 179 Westchester Avenue, Pound Ridge
Mamaroneck Town Center, 740 W. Boston Post Road, Mamaroneck
Mt. Kisco Memorial Complex at Leonard Park, 1 Wallace Drive, Mt. Kisco
Mt. Pleasant Community Center, 125 Lozza Drive, Valhalla
Mt. Vernon City Hall, 1 Roosevelt Square, Mt. Vernon
New Rochelle City Hall Annex, 90 Beaufort Place, New Rochelle
Joseph G. Caputo Community Center, 95 Broadway, Ossining
Peekskill Nutrition Center, Neighborhood Center, 4 Nelson Avenue, Peekskill,
Somers Town House, 335 Route 202, Somers
Westchester County Board of Elections, 25 Quarropas Street, White Plains
Grinton I. Will Library, 1500 Central Park Avenue, Yonkers
Riverfront Library, One Larkin Center, Yonkers
