[Truth Telling Guy]

Arkansan pleads guilty in vote fraud
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


A former city official in Helena, Ark., a historic old Mississippi River town, has pleaded guilty to fraudulent voting in an agreement that dismisses further charges of intimidating a witness by brandishing a gun. Top Stories


Larry Gray, former sanitation director for the city of Helena, was charged with submitting more than 25 absentee ballots for the May 21 primary election in Phillips County, where there is a history of voter fraud.
But authorities say Mr. Gray falsely applied for 200 absentee ballots, and submitted at least 98 ballots in the Democratic primary for state Senate, state House and sheriff. The investigation is ongoing.
Mr. Gray's guilty plea Thursday in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Arkansas is the first to emerge from an FBI investigation into charges of election fraud in Phillips County.
The plea agreement avoids a grand jury investigation, but Mr. Gray faces five years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
"This is just one guy. We believe there were other people engaged in that primary and other elections that basically involved the same type of scheme," U.S. Attorney H.E. "Bud" Cummins said. "We have ongoing investigations and continue to receive additional reports daily."
During the investigation, Mr. Gray was accused of "pointing a gun at someone he believed to be a witness and threatening him, and we arrested him pretty quickly," Mr. Cummins said.
Charges of election fraud and abuses are widespread in the state this year, where incumbent Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson is even with Democratic challenger and Attorney General Mark Pryor, according to polls.
Republicans say Democrats are trying to steal the Senate election by registering dead people and businesses as voters, illegally allowing early voting on weekends and not requiring identification to vote.
The Democratic Party of Arkansas concedes that earlier this year a former staffer hired two teenagers to register voters, but said they instead copied names from the phone book.
"We've got copies of 600 absentee-ballot applications and I can tell you there are a lot of questionable ones — either everyone in Phillips County writes exactly alike or we have problems," said Marty Ryall, Republican Party chairman. Phillips County, once one of the wealthiest counties in the Mississippi River Delta, has fallen on hard times in recent decades.
Democrats complained Monday when Republican poll-watchers challenged county clerks to require that voters provide identification before receiving an early voting ballot and said they were harassing black voters.
Republicans also challenged a voter who showed a Michigan driver's license.
"This underscores our point of why we have poll-watchers — to make sure clerks are complying with the law and requesting identification," Mr. Ryall said.
Mr. Cummins said his office is getting reports that activities similar to Mr. Gray's are ongoing during the early voting period.
"Enforcing the laws that guarantee voting rights and punish voting fraud is the duty of the Department of Justice. More than mere law enforcement, our responsibility to protect the access to and integrity of elections is the responsibility of upholding freedom itself," Mr. Cummins said.

[Truth Telling Guy]

Reno Blocks Effort to Stop Vote Fraud

Chuck Noe, NewsMax.com

Saturday, Nov. 2, 2002 Former Attorney General Janet Reno launched a full-scale legal action Friday in Miami to prevent an independent committee from monitoring Tuesday's elections. Reno, acting as a plaintiff and represented by Al Gore's 2000 election lawyer Kendall Coffey, sought and received an emergency injunction to prevent The Emergency Committee to Stop Bill McBride from sending independent poll watchers to precincts in Miami-Dade. A "liberal Democrat" judge sided with Reno and banned the organization's poll watchers from trying to curb Florida's notorious election fraud. Miami-Dade Judge Eleanor Schockett decreed Friday that The Emergency Committee to Stop Bill McBride may not supply 456 poll watchers in Miami-Dade County. Her reason? Merely because Democrats claimed the group might disrupt the election. [Editor's Note: The Emergency Committee to Stop Bill McBride has an urgent letter to you. Please read it – Click Here.] 'Blindsided' "We were blindsided by this. We were never even served officially," said Mark Goodrich, political coordinator of The Emergency Committee to Stop Bill McBride. In an exclusive interview, Goodrich told NewsMax.com that he received a voice mail at 7:30 p.m. Thursday telling him to be in court at 10:30 a.m. Friday. Without being given reason to believe he needed legal representation, Goodrich had no attorney present and was sandbagged. "Janet Reno's the plaintiff, Kendall Coffey – Al Gore's lawyer – is the lead lawyer, and there was little old me, getting thrown out of her [Schockett's] office," Goodrich said. "This is a liberal Democrat judge who's retiring, who said as soon as she sat down at the bench, 'I don't know anything about election law; you're going to have to bear with me.' She's a bankruptcy judge who wrote a new law for herself today," Goodrich fumed. According to a 1986 ruling by the state board of elections, poll watchers could include political action committees, Goodrich said. "She totally disregarded it." His group plans to appeal the judge's decision Monday. [Editor's Note: The Emergency Committee to Stop Bill McBride has an urgent letter to you. Please read it – Click Here.] Reno and Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Fla., "had said in their complaint that GOP officials unfairly benefited from new rules the Democrats did not learn of until it was too late to submit forms," the Associated Press reported Friday. Goodrich believes Reno is acting partly on McBride's behalf, "because she knows we are a serious organization, and partly because it's payback for us opposing her in the primary." Previously, The Emergency Committee was called "Americans for [Jeb] Bush" and led a massive effort to defeat Reno in the Democrat primary. The Stop McBride committee has no affiliation with the campaign of Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, he said. Still, the organization, which "has over 2,000 volunteers on Election Day to guard our rights," draws from Republicans and conservatives who would like to see Bush re-elected. Friday's ruling has energized the volunteers, Goodrich told NewsMax.com. He said his organization has been flooded with calls from media and supporters. [Editor's Note: The Emergency Committee to Stop Bill McBride has an urgent letter to you. Please read it – Click Here.] Unintended Result "This is motivating more people." Some volunteers plan protests at campaign appearances Saturday by Bill Clinton and Monday by Gore, he said. Goodrich said his organization was still moving ahead with a massive get-out-the-vote effort, with phone banks and door-to-door canvassing. He still plans to field poll watchers. "If the judge overrules them, we go to work Tuesday," he said. No Repeat of 2000 Stop McBride hopes to prevent the sort of abuses that marred the 2000 election. In Democrat-ruled Miami-Dade, government employees made "efforts to suppress the vote in Republican precincts," he said. Examples he cited: "They were telling people in line at 7 o'clock [p.m.] they had to leave," but people already in line are allowed by law to vote. People who had no voter registration card were turned away, but the law calls for a provisional vote to be cast. People who didn't know how to use the machines were not allowed to have someone help them, which the law permits. [Editor's Note: The Emergency Committee to Stop Bill McBride has an urgent letter to you. Please read it -- Click Here.] In Democrat precincts, the story was far different, Goodrich recalled. "People voted two and three times." The Democrats shipped in voters from outside the county. He recalled news accounts of Democrats ordering frightened, confused Haitian immigrants to vote for Gore and other Democrats. "They were cooking the books. As to what extent, it's undefinable." Goodrich had one final remark for Reno, Gore, Coffey, Meek, McBride and company: "What are they afraid of? What is it they don't want us to see?"