This is a follow up diary to one I wrote 3 days ago about what has all the appearances of a blatant case of ballot box stuffing by one or more GOP operatives in Maine last month. Please read that diary if you haven't already to get up to speed regarding this clear case of electoral fraud.
First, a correction: The Maine Legislature convenes this Wednesday, not today as I originally, mistakenly thought. So there's an extra two days for those of us who care about election integrity to change the course of events regarding the planned Maine Senate sham "hearing" about the issue which Senate President Thibodeau has informed us will be a rubber stampede designed to seat the GOP beneficiary of the ballot fraud. More on that later.
One thing I didn't get into in that last diary was the chain of custody that is required of all ballots in any statewide election in Maine. The drill is that the precinct election clerk, after tallying all the votes on all the ballots and verifying that the ballot count coincides with the number of voter who were recorded as having voted, he or she then puts the ballots and voter manifest into a ballot box, seals it, then gives it to a member of the State Police to deliver to a supposedly secure room in Augusta.
As noted at the beginning of the previous diary, that secure ballot storage area was once before violated by an aide to Democratic Speaker of the Maine House, John Martin. That guy (Ken Allen) was caught red handed in the act and was subsequently prosecuted and plead guilty to felony ballot tampering, and was sent to prison.
This time, however, nobody was caught in the act of stuffing the Long Island ballot box; but we do have a proverbial smoking gun in the form of a violated ballot box which contains 21 more ballots than the original ballot count and voter manifest agreed were sealed into the box on election night - 21 extra ballots that all happen to contain votes for the GOP candidate, Cathy Manchester, who lost the original tally on Nov 4 but who "won" the recount by 11 votes as a direct result of those 21 extra ballots - all marked for her.
Anyway, back to the chain of custody: on Sunday, Cynthia Dill posted an entry in her Bangor Daily News blog that raised the issue of the role of the State Police in this matter. Read that blog entry and then we'll go below the orange convolution to discuss it and other facets of this unfolding crime mystery.
Dill, by the way, was the Democratic candidate for US Senate in 2012, running against Indie Angus King and a Republican, Charlie Summers, who was the sitting Secretary of State (who oversees elections) and who, like Dill, also served in the Maine Senate where the shit will be hitting the fan tomorrow. If that's too convoluted for you, you're in the wrong story. Even the convolutions in this one are convoluted.
Anyway, Dill is acutely aware of the dynamics going on in Ballotgate II, having been deeply enmeshed in Maine State politics for years.
Dill's post on Sunday wasn't a perfect exposition of the controversy (she inaccurately calls it "voter fraud" several times instead of "electoral fraud", a mistake I've made myself) and I think she injects a bit more humor into the subject than it deserves (also something I'm often guilty of). But she does make some very salient points. For instance, I think she nails it when explaining why this most obvious case of election fraud is being dismissed as if it were nothing more than a clerical mishap by more than a few Mainers:
A hyper-polarized public no longer readily distinguishes between right and wrong; only right and left. Decisions by public officials are filtered through layers of distrust, cowardice, connivance and collusion.
Bingo. Here's Senate President Thibodeau's comment, which is a case in point:
Thibodeau said it’s his tentative opinion, based on information he has seen so far, that Manchester is the winner and insinuations by some that fraud could be at play in the election could damage the integrity of the new Legislature as it convenes.
“It’s unfortunate to throw around terms like that without some sort of substantial evidence,” Thibodeau said. “The fact of the matter is that we have had a recount and the results of that recount left Cathy Manchester as the apparent winner. Because some folks are not happy with that outcome, they’re throwing around some pretty wild accusations.”
LOL. 21 ballots that were not on the election night tally or manifest show up in the box on recount day and
every single one of them is marked for the GOP candidate, giving her an 11 vote reversal win, and that's not substantial evidence of fraud? So Dill has Thibodeau pegged, that's for sure.
Also, Thibodeau's comment that "insinuations of fraud" could damage the integrity of the Legislature is also laughable. What can damage the Legislature is his attempt to sweep the fraud under the rug as he is prepared to do tomorrow. And, getting back to the title of this diary, another institution's integrity is on the line in this case: the State Police.
Dill raises that point in her blog, first mentioning it as just a narrative point describing the chain of custody. But the closing thought of her post includes this provocative paragraph:
Will Cathy Manchester, a former stock car racer and the first woman Chief of Police in Maine, question the possibility of misconduct by the brotherhood of Maine State Police? Will she demand an investigation that might result in her losing a coveted senate seat?
The obvious answer to that is "No," since Manchester has already stated her satisfaction with the outcome of the recount that the fraudulent ballots gave her, but Dill's posing of the question about police misconduct is, in and of itself, a very brave thing to do and it's a question that needs to be fully aired.
What happened to that ballot box after it was sealed and handed over to the State Police? We know that the contents changed from the time that they were sealed into the ballot box in Long Island to when they were opened again there for the recount, after having been in Police custody for 2 weeks.
What happened to that ballot box? Is there corruption in the ranks of the Highway Patrol, or is the security at the ballot storage facility in Augusta so lax that ballot stuffing can occur there?
Has anyone interviewed the Long Island town clerk who sealed the box on election night? Why did she refuse to answer press inquiries about what she knows, instead referring questions to SoS Dunlap who wasn't there?
And what is the role of Elections Director, Deputy SoS Julie Flynn? She was on the ground when the recount was conducted and it was her initial call to dismiss the need for a criminal investigation despite the "smoking gun" nature of the 21 ballots. Why did she feel the need to overlook such an obvious case of tampering with the evidence of it staring her directly in the face? It's as if she created some "facts on the ground" that her "boss" SoS Dunlap was either unable or unwilling to reverse; his statement after her decision to pass on a criminal probe is quite interesting:
“This type of discrepancy has not occurred in recent memory,” said Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap. “It will be up to the Senate to try to discern what’s happened here.”
So we have an historically discrepant case of ballot "anomalies" and the place to discover the truth is in the politically charged arena where the affected race will possibly alter the balance of power in choosing the State's Constitutional Officers???
Flynn, for her part, has been incommunicado about the whole mess. I'm sure she doesn't want to have to answer any uncomfortable questions.
The Senate Elections Committee is not the place where these questions will be asked or where this should, or even can, be looked into dispassionately, and the Maine Democratic Party's appeal to the GOP for a fair hearing in that Committee is misguided. The GOP has already signalled their intent to hold a sham hearing and precipitous vote first thing Wednesday. Read that blockquote above from Thibodeau's statement. Is this a man who can be reasoned with? When will Democrats begin to take right wing extremists at their word?
A special prosecutor needs to take this up, immediately. Someone who has the trust of the whole state and who has the authority to pry even into the ranks of the State Police. 22 years ago when the shoe was on the other foot and the Dems were caught stuffing ballots, the Democratic AG, Carpenter, enlisted the assistance of the US Attorney, Republican Richard Cohen, to keep the investigation non-partisan. Something like that is what has to happen now.