Posted on 10/22/2004 5:23:15 AM PDT by Prince Charles
Witness unveils campaign tactics
PUBLIC CORRUPTION: Former Pastrick worker testifies paving projects were part of vote-buying effort.
BY BILL DOLAN, Times Staff Writer
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Friday, October 22, 2004 12:15 AM CDT
SOUTH BEND -- A veteran of East Chicago Mayor Robert Pastrick's campaigns gave a federal jury a lesson Thursday in the city's hardball politics.
Byron Florence testified he helped win re-election for Pastrick and City Councilman Frank Kollintzas in 1999 by directing free concrete to city residents in return for their support
Florence said he also disenfranchised anti-Pastrick voters by luring them into illegally voting twice in the same election.
Kollintzas, East Chicago City Councilman Joe De La Cruz and East Chicago City Controller Edwardo Maldonado are being tried on federal fraud and conspiracy charges.
The trio allegedly took part in a scheme to convert $24 million from East Chicago city coffers into campaign money for Pastrick and his allies.
Federal prosecutors have named Pastrick as an unindicted co-conspirator along with a number of elected and appointed East Chicago figures, including Florence. They have not been charged with any crimes.
Florence, a lifelong East Chicago resident, said he is steeped in East Chicago campaign history and has profited from that experience with a career on public payrolls. He has been an East Chicago city worker. He now is chief outside investigator for North Township Trustee Greg Cvitkovich, a close Pastrick ally.
Florence said he was Pastrick's 4th District coordinator -- "I coordinated all political activities, recruiting workers, putting up signs" -- for the 1999 municipal Democratic primary against challenger Stephen R. "Bob" Stiglich.
He said Stiglich's campaign paid $20 to $40 to voters ignorant of the law to cast absentee ballots for Stiglich. Stiglich, who now is Democratic county chairman and county auditor, couldn't be reached Thursday evening for comment. He has repeatedly denied any knowledge of vote buying in his campaign.
Florence said he found a way to get their votes thrown out. "We had a list of every time an absentee vote was made. We drove those folks to the polls (to vote) for a second time," Florence said, which would invalidate their votes. Florence said his plan had the approval of East Chicago city officials.
Federal prosecutors contend Pastrick, Kollintzas, De la Cruz, Maldonado and others in Pastrick's campaign responded to the absentee ballots with an effort to outbid any opposition vote buying by giving residents free concrete driveways, patios, sidewalks, steps and even parking lots worth thousands of dollars.
Florence said the scheme was obvious. "There was a lot of construction. There were work crews all over. Anybody who drove through East Chicago could see it. The city looked like a war zone."
Bryan Truitt, one of Maldonado's defense lawyers, said outside the presence of the jury that Florence was fired by East Chicago for physical and verbal attacks on city employees, in a dispute with the mayor. "He is angry at anybody employed by the city (of East Chicago) ... that's why he's turned on the defendants."
Using free concrete and crack as well as the other felonious activities above, the Rats wrote the book on How To Steal An Election.
SOURCE: http://www.conservativeaction.org/resources.php3?nameid=votefraud
How Democrats Steal Elections - Top 10 Methods of Liberal Vote Fraud
1. Over-Voting. In Democrat strongholds like St. Louis, Philadelphia and Detroit, some precincts had 100% of their registered voters voting, with 99% of the ballots going to Gore. Clearly, multiple voting resulted in extra tallies for Gore in the 2000 election. (New York Post, 12/09/00).
2. Dead Voters. This classic Democratic method of vote fraud goes all the way back to 1960 in Chicago and Dallas. The 2000 election was no exception. In Miami-Dade County, for example, some of the 144 ineligible votes (those which officials actually admitted to) were cast by dead people, including a Haitian-American who's been deceased since 1977 (Miami-Herald, 12/24/00).
3. Mystery Voters. These "voters" cast votes anyway but are not even registered to vote. In heavily Democratic Broward County, for example, more than 400 ballots were cast by non-registered voters. (Miami-Herald 1/09/01)
4. Military ballots. Many of these votes were disqualified for the most mundane and trivial reasons. At least 1,527 valid military ballots were discarded in Florida by Democratic vote counters (Drudge Report, 11/19/00).
5. Criminals. Felons are a natural Democratic voter and they're protected on voter rolls across the country. In Florida at least 445 ex-convicts - including rapists and murderers -- voted illegally on November 7th. Nearly all of them were registered Democrats. (Miami-Herald 12/01/00)
6. Illegal aliens. These voters have long been a core liberal constituency, especially in California. In Orange County in 1996, Rep. Bob Dornan had his congressional seat stolen from him when thousands of illegal aliens voted for Loretta Sanchez (Christian Science Monitor, 9/2/97).
7. Vote-buying. Purchasing votes has long been a traditional scheme by Democrats, and not just with money. In the 2000 election in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Democratic workers initiate a "smokes-for-votes" campaign in which they paid dozens of homeless men with cigarettes if they cast ballots for Al Gore (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 11/14/00).
8. Phantom Voters. These voters don't really exist, but their ballots do. In the 1996 Lousiana Senate race, GOP candidate Woody Jenkins had the election stolen from him when he discovered that 7,454 actual votes were cast but had no paper trail to authenticate them (Behind the Headlines, F.R. Duplantier, 4/27/97).
9. Dimpled chads. Those infamous punch-cards were a ballot bonanza for Al Gore. Democratic poll workers in Palm Beach, Dade and Broward counties tampered and manipulated thousands of ineligible ballots and counted them for Gore, even though no clear vote could be discerned. (NewsMax.com 11/27, 12/22, 11/18, 11/19/00).
10. Absentee ballots. Normally it's assumed that Republicans benefit from absentee ballots. But in the case of Miami's 1997 mayoral election, hundreds of absentee ballots were made for sale or sent out to non-Miami residents. Fraud was so extensive in the race that the final results were overturned in court (FL Dept. of Law Enforcement Report, 1/5/98)."
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WE MUST FIGHT VOTE FRAUD!
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