A Democrat operative and former Atlantic Metropolis council president was arrested final Thursday, February 1st, after being the alleged mastermind of a mail-in poll fraud operation within the New Jersey metropolis. The alleged particular person, Craig Callaway, was working on the time for the Jeff Van Drew re-election marketing campaign. The previous Democrat-turned-Republican in 2020 denied any information of the operation.
From the New Jersey Monitor:
U.S. Attorneys accused Callaway and different unnamed subordinates of paying Atlantic Metropolis residents between $30 and $50 to behave as approved messengers and request mail-in ballots for voters whom that they had by no means met. Prosecutors allege that these ballots have been later forged with out the precise voters’ information.
The fees seem to stem from work Callaway did for Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s 2022 reelection marketing campaign. There’s no indication Van Drew (R-02) knew in regards to the alleged scheme.
Rep. Van Drew reportedly paid Callaway’s consulting agency $65,500 for “strategic consulting”. Just below one-third of that charge, or $25,000, was paid in October simply earlier than the 2022 election. Van Drew had beforehand paid Callaway’s agency $110,000 in his 2020 re-election marketing campaign as effectively.
Callaway is dealing with as much as 5 years in jail and a $250,000 if convicted on the cost of “procuring, casting, and tabulating fraudulent ballots”. However this wasn’t the primary time the previous Atlantic Metropolis council president confronted prison costs. He’s been convicted twice earlier than on corruption-related costs. In line with the New York Times and reported by the New Jersey Monitor:
The fees usually are not the primary Callaway has confronted. In 2006, he admitted accepting $36,000 in bribes from a contractor he helped to acquire metropolis contracts. In 2008, he admitted guilt in a separate blackmail scheme focusing on an Atlantic Metropolis councilman whereas serving the sentence of his bribery conviction.
In 2017, Assemblyman Don Guardian, then town’s mayor, accused Callaway of a related poll harvesting scheme to spice up Frank Gilliam, who received the election however resigned in late 2019 after pleading responsible to wire fraud over the theft of $86,000 from a youth basketball workforce he ran.
“It’s no secret that candidates from each events have employed Callaway up to now to assist them win elections. Those that employed him can not plead ignorance now. Everybody in Atlantic County is aware of precisely what Callaway’s operation is and the blatant illegality of all of it,” stated Atlantic County Democratic Chairman Michael Suleiman.
Rep. Van Drew, who received New Jersey’s 2nd District in 2022 by 19 proportion factors, denied any information of the scheme and referenced an settlement he had signed with Callaway’s group to forestall one of these exercise.
In line with The Press of Atlantic City, Callaway is “often known as an skilled at getting out the mail-in-ballot vote.”
In 2018, New Jersey handed an growth of their “motor voter” legislation, which robotically registers people who acquire a drivers license. The growth allowed state businesses to register voters as effectively. These embrace the Workplace of Incapacity Providers, the Parole Board (upon completion of sentence), the Division of Medical Help and Well being Providers, and past.
Computerized voter registration legal guidelines, handed in at the very least 11 states and Washington DC, create an virtually limitless supply of voters for dangerous actors to govern in the way in which Callaway is alleged to have. Particularly when dangerous actors acquire entry to voter roll updates in real-time below the guise of stopping Get Out The Vote messaging as soon as a voter casts a poll.
Within the 2020 election, the Michigan Heart for Election Regulation and Administration (MCELA), a non-profit based by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the recipient of $12.04 million in “Zuckerbucks” from David Becker’s CEIR in 2020, gained exactly this type of access.
The President of the MCELA, Jen McKernan, informed Michigan radio host Tracy Samilton, “when you vote, all these teams urging you to get to the polls might be knowledgeable by elections officers that you just’ve carried out it, and the messages will stop.”
With this real-time entry to updates, a nasty actor would know who voted, however extra importantly, who didn’t vote.
Individuals who didn’t vote in an election hardly ever, if ever, test with their elections places of work to make sure they didn’t vote. For instance, this woman from Illinois, who was shocked to search out out she’d voted in quite a few elections, regardless of claiming Trump’s 2020 election was her first time voting: