Media Cover Up Mail Ballot Fraud in Paterson, New Jersey, Give It No National Attention

June 28, 2020 (EIRNS)—A law professor University of California, Irvine, wrote back on May 20 in the Election Law Blog that there was a “genuine absentee ballot fraud scandal going on in Paterson, New Jersey and it is going to get a lot of national attention.” But that is just what it has not gotten over the past month, while national media have repeatedly attached the phrase “with no evidence” to all reports of President Donald Trump’s warnings that mail-in elections could be fraudulent. A search of news items about the Paterson fraud on Google turns up only one item of coverage outside North Jersey local media in the past month, a June 14 video on NBC News Channel 4 in New York City.

Again today, an op-ed in the Washington Post by Obama Justice Department official Joshua Geltzer is called, “Four Ways William Barr Is Already Subverting the 2020 Elections.” And aside from the bizarre claim that Barr intervened in the 2020 election by the DOJ dropping charges against Gen. Michael Flynn, Geltzer writes that Barr is

“actively spreading disinformation himself. He echoes Trump’s debunked claims that mail-in ballots—which will be crucial during the pandemic—somehow leave the country vulnerable to election fraud and interference. Barr recently told Fox News that these votes could ‘open the floodgates of potential fraud,’ without providing any basis for the claim.”

The Paterson election in fact provided multiple forms of evidence of how mail-in elections can result in fraud, especially where ballots are being sent by mail to many apartment buildings and other multi-family dwellings or to townhouse neighborhood mailboxes. Numerous Paterson residents whose votes were recorded attested that they did not, in fact, vote. The average disqualification rate for mail-in ballots across the state was a very high 9.6%, and 8.1% even without Paterson. Some 2,300 ballots in Paterson were disqualified for signatures which did not match those on voter records. Over 800 ballots were invalidated for appearing in mailboxes improperly bundled together. One city council race appears to have had its result completely reversed by fraud; and so on.

Another key—and apparently close—election, this one a Democratic primary for the right to face Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November in Kentucky, is being slowly counted over more than a week’s time now. It was entirely conducted by ballots mailed to voters. There will be many more. The President’s, and AG Barr’s clearly plausible statements which suggest great vigilance is necessary with such voting, are being censored in effect by the blanket non-coverage of Paterson.