Hello again, this is the third installment of my chronicling of the events surrounding both criminal ballot tampering that was revealed in a recount of Maine's District 25 Senate race last month, and of the subsequent underhanded manoeuvrings of the new GOP Senate Majority around that issue as it affects a critical early vote in the combined Maine House and Senate to elect the state's Constitutional Officers (or "COs", the AG, SoS and Treasurer) this afternoon. Here's installment 1 and 2
I just spent the morning as the guest of my local Senator, Dave Miramant, a Democrat from Knox County, who, along with the entire Democratic caucus and election integrity proponents here and around the country, is extremely disturbed about the cavalier attitude of the GOP leadership. Dave invited me to watch the swearing in of the new Senate, something I thought might be historic due to the expressed intention of the incoming GOP Senate President, Mike Thibodeau, to fast-track seating of the Republican in District 25, Cathy Manchester, in order to have her vote available for the CO vote soon to follow. What I was expecting, based on Thibodeau's published comments a week ago, was an attempt to rush an investigation of the disputed recount in order for the Senate to vote Manchester in. What actually happened, which I was informed of after having been seated in the Senate chamber next to Dave's lovely wife Dee, was an unprecedented Parliamentary move that summarily removed the candidate that the Secretary of State had provisionally installed, Cathy Breen, seating her opponent, Manchester, by means of a simple Order of the Senate which bypassed the messy and time consuming process of conducting an investigation into what can only be described as an overt, ham handed case of electoral fraud.
And the reason for the change in plans is given by the GOP Chair of the Senate Committee that is charged with investigating the recount mess. Here's what he said:
Katz said “there’s unlikely to be enough time” for the committee to make a recommendation Wednesday.
So the machinations of the GOP leadership in order to increase their chances of winning the CO vote were worse than I thought they were going to be, but the ballot tampering case itself was revealed to be even more egregious and more obviously criminal than I was aware of before this morning. Those of you who've been following this story know that that's a pretty low bar to slide under, but slide the GOP did, and it's not over yet.
Before I go any further, here's the URL for the streaming video of the CO vote which you can link to and then minimize and wait till the sound comes on to watch when it gets going. The vote is scheduled for 2:00, but that's legislative time, and there will likely be some formalities beforehand, so I don't expect the vote till 3 or so, EST.
Now back to the Ballotgate II facts: as of yesterday, I'd been aware (and made this site aware) that the Long Island portion of the District 25 recount was handled poorly, bordering on malfeasance, by the Deputy SoS for Elections, Julie Flynn (a career bureaucrat) who refused to order an immediate investigation of what can best be desribed as the "smoking gun of ballot tampering" that she and the recount team and observers encountered in that small precinct. I was aware that the voter manifest (record of all who legally voted in that election) matched the number of ballots counted on election night, 171. I was aware that 21 extra ballots that weren't accounted for in that election night manifest appeared in the ballot box when it was opened for the recount. I was also aware that those 21 ballots were all marked for the GOP candidate, Manchester. I also was aware (although I didn't post it in the body of either prior diary because I read it in a news report as a comment from a Dem observer to the recount and didn't want to present it in the narrative until it was official) that those 21 ballots were reported as being all together on top of the box, not mixed into the rest of the ballots.
So, just based on all those things I was aware of, I concluded and reported here that the circumstances of that recount were prima facie evidence of criminal electoral fraud. And the malfeasance that I accuse Julie Flynn of committing was for her to have looked at that evidence directly in front of her and then deciding not to order an immediate forensic investigation. Instead, she passed the job of investigating the fraud to the GOP-controlled Senate, who's incoming President in the link above expressed his prejudgement on the whole affair, telegraphing his intention to seat Manchester.
But what I didn't know till I got to Augusta and met with Dave this morning is that the circumstances surrounding the Long Island recount were even worse than I already knew:
1) the 21 extra ballots were not on top of the box apart from the rest of the ballots. There were four bundles of ballots in the box, all banded and numbered with a maximum of 50 ballots per bundle so that there were three bundles of 50 (labeled "50") and one bundle of 42 - but that smaller bundle was banded and marked with the count of 21 - so that half of the smaller of the 4 bundles was where the 21 extra ballots appeared, and they were all marked for Manchester and grouped together in that smaller bundle. The labels on the 4 bundles add up to 171, the tally on the manifest and on the election night recount. Here's the statement from Julie Flynn to the Secretary of the Senate regarding these facts )which I have a hard copy of but can't find online:
There were four bundles (lots) of ballots in the tamper-proof container each with a tally sheet wrapped around the lot. The tally sheets for three of the bundles totaled 50 ballots each, matching the number of ballots in the lot, and the recount tallies agreed with the election night tallies for those lots. The tally sheet for the fourth bundle showed 21 total ballots, but the bundle contained an extra 21 ballots that were not reflected on the tally. All 21 of the additional ballots showed votes marked for Ms. Manchester. Thus, 192 votes were tallied at the recount. After the recount, on Monday November 24th, representatives for the candidates inpected the Incoming Voter List for Long Island and agreed that there were 171voter names checked off as having voted,including 34 absentee voters.
If Julie Flynn deserved to keep her job, that bolded sentence would have read:
Thus, the 21 extra ballots were not included in the recount tally.
2) And here's the "smoking bullet next to the smoking gun" if you like: those 21 extra ballots that weren't accounted for in the original manifest and that were actually stuffed into a bundle of ballots labeled with the "21" count on it, were not just marked for Manchester;
they were only marked for Manchester and no other candidates.
Here's the portion of the notarized statement of Cathy Breen that applies in this regard:
During the recount, an additional 21 ballots were found in the locked box for the Town, all together and only marked for Manchester{...}
These newly found phantom ballots were discovered in the final "odd" lot of ballots counted from Long Island. The tally sheet wrapped around this combined lot of 42 ballots, however, included only 21 ballots. The 21 phantom Manchester ballots discovered during the recount had not been recorded by the local official who completed the tally sheets on Election Day.
note: Both of the above statements from Flynn and Breen were part of the official Senate "Advance Journal and Calendar." Sorry I don't have the chops to post images here or I'd do that with a pdf.
Democracy is dead in Augusta. The swearing in was full of comity, pleasantries and tradition, but it was a hollow event, shrouded over by the bland acceptance by the Majority of blatant criminality in the halls of power. When Cathy Manchester was seated in Cathy Breen's seat, there was raucus applause from the GOP side and polite applause from the Democratic side, but there was a cold knife in my heart. I've authored two bills that became laws in this state that deal with electoral process. And I had to watch as the Senate picked up the smoking gun of a stolen election and shoved it into its waistband.
I'm going to post this now so that anyone who wants to watch the streaming video of the CO vote can do it. I will be editing the diary in the meantime, adding some links, and adding the language of an official statement that Julie Flynn made (where some of the details above were revealed); I will also be transcribing the notarized statement of Cathy Breen who made the revelation that the extra ballots were marked only for Manchester.