FROM:
September 4, 2014
TO:
By Electronic Mail & U.S. Mail
Honorable Preet Bharara
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York
One St. Andrews Plaza
New York, NY 10007
Honorable Sara L. Shudofsky
Chief, Civil Division
U.S. Attorney's Office
Southern District of New York
Attn: Chief, Civil Rights Unit
86 Chambers Street, 3rd Floor
New York, New York 10007
Fax:
(212) 637-2750
Civil Rights Bureau
New York State Attorney General's Office
Re: Monitoring of Assembly District 86 Democratic Primary
During the Special Election to elect the assembly person last year, the voters of this district faced gross incidents of voter suppression and voter intimidation that cast enormous doubts on the legitimacy and fairness of the election results certified by the Board of Elections in which Victor Pichardo was declared the winner by a very small and questionable margin.
We are urging the Federal, State and City government, to be vigilant in preventing these events from happening again in Tuesday’s Democratic Primary.
These events included, but are not limited to:
• Machines that only had levers for the party machine candidate Victor Pichardo, preventing voters from voting for any other candidate;
• The use of hundreds of inspectors, paid by the Board of Elections, as campaign workers for the machine candidate inside the polling sites, including the mother of the candidate and another staffer of a State Senator;
• Delegates of different candidates bullied around by County appointed inspectors and by elected officials and county party officials inside the polling site, which is illegal;
• Voters and other candidates testimonies, point to these "board workers" as telling voters how to vote, often pointing at Mr. Pichardo as the way to do so;
• Polling Centers at P.S 306 did not have candidate Hector Ramirez's name on the ballot;
• Polling site at P.S 206, of Aqueduct Ave, in which the trigger to vote for Ramirez was continually stuck;
• P.S 85 at 2400 Marion Avenue, where machines were mysteriously shutdown;
• Polling site at JBH senior center, at 230 E 179 street, where voters were turned away because supposedly the machines did not work;
• BOE executive, a close relative of a party official, coming to the Bronx offices in the middle of the night, on election night, sending everyone home and staying with a few selected people;
• The Board of Election abruptly decided to stop counting the votes, after counting only 88% without taking the necessary precaution to give all the candidates transparent and fair assurances that those "broken" machines would not be tampered with further. Later, news reports appeared that they counted 100% (see
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/elections/2013/nyc-primary/other_races/results.html) with, obviously, Mr. Pichardo on top by a few votes.
Many of these and other problems are documented and others were reported by frustrated voters.
For the upcoming Primary election on Tuesday, September 9th, we are asking our State, City and Federal government to step in to prevent and stop this madness and follow up with any necessary investigation. Our district deserves a fair, transparent and democratic election.
On behalf of the people of the 86th Assembly District,
Very Truly Yours,
Hector Ramirez
Hector Ramirez
Democratic Candidate for State Assembly
86th District
