By MARK ALDRICH and TOM RUE Republicans sweep Monticello?
MONTICELLO -- "I hit the roof, I can tell you that," Monticello Democratic trustee candidate Alvin Dumas said after he was told that his name was not in the voting books on village election day, March 19.Dumas and several other prominent Monticello and Town of Thompson Democrats were told their names did not appear in the books when they appeared at the polls to vote. Several hundred voters, including incumbent Democratic mayor Robert Friedland, sheriff Joe Wasser, and former Thompson Democratic chair Morris Rosenbloom, were also told they could not use the voting machines, because their names were missing.
Republicans swept the three village elections. [Click here for unofficial results.]
According to village manager David Berner, the polls were "a mob scene."
Voters who were told that their names did not appear in the books could not vote on the machines, but they were given two options: return to the polls when the problem was solved; or vote immediately, by affidavit. Affidavits are handled in the same way absentee ballots are handled.
By the end of the voting, there were about 200 affidavits yet to be counted. Berner said that, when he was on a board of elections in another county, the highest number of affidavits he had ever seen in an election was three.
Affidavits are paper ballots sealed in an envelope that displays the voter's name and address. After verifying the name and address on the envelope, an elections official hands the ballot over to another elections official, who removes the ballot without looking at the envelope. The board of elections assured voters the affidavit ballots were secret ballots.
Thus, "no one was denied the opportunity to vote," board of elections commissioner Timothy Hill said. "There were always paper ballots available" for affidavits, he added.
But an unkown number of voters, in the hundred according to The Times Herald Record, walked away from the polls, not to return, not to vote. And stores began to circulate that voters were being turned away from the polls.
The 200 affidavits were placed in a locked box that was taken to the Sullivan County government center by the Monticello police and a sheriff's deputy, who was on hand at the request of the Town of Thompson Democrats.
According to the board of elections, the problem allegedly began when an incorrect "keyword" was typed when the voter books were being generated. The Monticello books are usually generated by culling names from a computer database that contains all of the county's registered voters. To search through the database for village voters, a keyword that would appear only on Monticello voters' registrations was used.
"VMO," for "Village of Monticello," was entered, officials say, but apparently not all Monticello residents are tagged in the database with this identifier.
The explanation raises further questions, though, as "VMO" does not appear at all in the database.
Unofficial results show approximately 1100 votes were cast in the election for mayor. There are 2538 registered Monticello voters.
The ratio of Democrats to Republicans registered voters is about three to one: 1890 are Democrats and 648 are Republicans.
Above text is copyright by the author.
Duplication without permission is prohibited.