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Milgram seems determined to get voter-fraud conviction in Atlantic City
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ATLANTIC CITY — Annette Ortiz described Atlantic City’s messenger ballot process in a matter-of-fact way.
“He gave me the paper. He told me which bubble to fill in,” Ortiz said, referring to the circles adjacent to candidate names on a messenger ballot for the June 2 primary election. “This is just what they do all the time. It happens every election. It’s nothing new.”
Floyd Tally approached Ortiz in the lobby of her home at Liberty Avenue Apartments with a messenger ballot on Election Day, and the 245-pound ex-convict left nothing to chance with Ortiz’s vote for the Democratic candidate in the mayoral primary race, she said. Police arrested Tally on Friday outside the Mays Landing Criminal Courts Complex. He faces voter-fraud charges for allegedly improperly gathering votes for Councilman Marty Small.
David Callaway also was arrested Friday outside the courthouse; a third defendant, LuQuay Q. Zahir, was arrested June 5 at his Virginia Avenue home.
Unrestrained absentee- and messenger-ballot abuse has been a familiar story in Atlantic City elections for more than a decade. Despite various arrests, such as those of Tally, Callaway and Zahir over the years, no investigation has succeeded in stopping the campaign tactic.
That could change this year.
State lawmakers are expected to enact limitations on the number of messenger ballots an individual bearer can handle. Attorney General Anne Milgram appears determined to continue a full-scale investigation. And the arrests she has made may hold up in court better than cases from previous investigations because the state appears to have a stronger case.
Authorities claim Callaway and Zahir filled out multiple ballots intended for other voters and allege all three ballot bearers illegally tampered with messenger-ballot applications. Messenger ballots, designed for ill and shut-in voters, are easily abused because they potentially put residents’ votes in the hands of the campaign workers who carry them back and forth from election offices.
State investigators got a taste of what to expect in Atlantic City when Callaway and Tally helped swing Pleasantville’s Board of Education election results on the strength of more than 200 messenger ballots. The election raised a red flag, and a month later, authorities put Atlantic City’s election under a microscope.
Investigators “were telling our workers months before the campaign that they’d be watching,” Zahir said.
The three men charged were part of a much bigger messenger ballot effort for Small, whether the councilman sanctioned it or not.
Zahir delivered 119 messenger-ballot applications for the resort’s election. The Atlantic County Clerk’s Office rejected 54 of those applications for a variety of reasons, including discrepancies with voter signatures and identifications. Callaway and Tally each collected 132 messenger applications. The county rejected 58 of those submitted by Callaway and 44 submitted by Tally.
Jennawade Walker was among those on the list of rejected applications. After being approached on the street about filling out a messenger-ballot application and submitting one, she said, she received a letter from the county to inform her that the signature did not match her signed voter registration card.
Applications that are rejected can be corrected only with signatures of the voter, according to county elections specialist John Piatt. Walker said she never contacted the county or resubmitted an application. But on Election Day, someone was at her Connecticut Avenue doorstep with a ballot. How her application was approved without her involvement remains a mystery.
Election records also show her application and ballot were handled by Zahir. Walker knows Zahir, and also knows neither document she submitted to the county was given to him.
“If that’s true, that’s definitely a violation,” Piatt said.
But those types of violations have been difficult to prove in court.
In 2005, a state grand jury indicted Councilman Small on 10 third-degree charges that alleged he was not the designated person to handle 10 separate Atlantic City residents’ messenger ballots. The 11th fourth-degree charge alleged Small stopped a person from voting at the polls.
“These are not the type of offenses that leap out at you,” said Edwin Jacobs Jr., a high-powered city attorney that represented Small in the case.
The trial jury seemed to feel the same way, returning a not-guilty verdict after only 30 minutes of deliberation. Jacobs says there’s always two ways to read a law, and the more technical the charges, the more flimsy the prosecution’s case.
There are plenty of technicalities in the state’s newest Atlantic City ballot case. Authorities allege Callaway and Zahir designated themselves as authorized messengers on hundreds of applications, a responsibility of the voter and a third-degree offense.
“Stuff like that I would put in the technical category,” Jacobs said. “If (voters) need some assistance, what are you going to do? Send a state trooper to help every one of them?”
However, this time the state is not relying only on technical violations. At least 11 ballots between Zahir and Callaway were allegedly never received by the voters but cast as votes. Callaway is also facing a second-degree charge for allegedly telling one voter how to vote, similar to the alleged conduct of Tally when he dealt with Annette Ortiz.
“Clearly, they are distinguishable, and I discussed that topic earlier this week with Mr. Jacobs,” said James J. Leonard Jr., Zahir’s attorney.
But Leonard said the state still has a tall hurdle ahead, apparently relying mostly on the testimony of uninformed voters.
“The state is going to have to produce actual voters to testify under oath that ballots submitted in their name were submitted fraudulently and that the defendants were the ones who submitted them,” he said. “Both defendants vehemently deny the allegations. The burden of proving these allegations are on the state.”
And the burden of proof is reliant on people such as Ortiz, a welfare recipient used once for her vote and now expecting to be used again for her testimony. She’s due in Trenton on June 30 to testify before a grand jury.
“I don’t have money or a ride to get up there,” she said. “But I’m scared. They said they’ll put a warrant out if I don’t go. I didn’t ask for this.”
E-mail Michael Clark:
Michael.Clark@pressofac.com
Posted in Breaking on Sunday, June 14, 2009 5:00 am Updated: 5:50 am.
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