June 20 9:33 PM ET

Grand jury cites KJ vote fraud

By Chris McKenna, The Times Herald-Record reporter  

Kiryat Joel, NY (TTHR) -- An Orange County grand jury says irregularities took place in two Kiryas Joel elections last year and has recommended changes in state law to reduce voting fraud statewide.

The jury met for six months to investigate the village's June and November elections, hearing testimony from 25 witnesses on 12 dates. No one was charged. The jury instead issued a report that was released yesterday by District Attorney Frank Phillips.

"I support the findings in the report," Phillips said. "I feel they were well-reasoned."

In its strongest statement, the jury concluded that registration and voting irregularities in the two elections "may have had a serious and deleterious impact on the integrity of the election system within the Village of Kiryas Joel."

Village leaders reacted angrily to the statement, saying the report showed only minimal cases of improper voting."I don't know how they came up with such a conclusion," Mayor Abraham Wieder said.

The jury found that 32 underage students were registered to vote with false birth dates and that eight then voted in the June 6 election before turning 18 – as reported last year in the Times Herald-Record. It also heard testimony from a witness who said some people voted more than once or cast ballots under names given to them by poll workers. The testimony was uncorroborated and didn't name culprits, according to the report.

Wieder, who was re-elected in that tumultuous election, questioned the value of such statements. "Maybe that witness had an agenda," he said.

The hotly contested election was unprecedented in the Hasidic village, where candidates usually run without opposition. In a bitter court battle before the election, supporters of Wieder's challenger – village trustee Mendel Schwimmer –warned of fraud and listed hundreds of people they said were illegally registered to vote.
The Record later investigated the election results and confirmed that at least 12 people voted illegally and 28 others cast questionable ballots. Those votes would not have changed the outcome.

The grand jury – which was assembled in October to investigate the election – recommended that New York require voters to show identification before they can register and before voting. Under current election law, they don't have to. And election officials can't ask them for proof of identity, age, address or citizenship. It also suggested creating a statewide voter-registration database to enable county election boards to update their voting rolls more easily.

At least eight states already have such databases, and legislation is pending in Congress that would require all states to have them.
The identification issue is more troublesome. About a dozen states now require voters to prove who they are before voting, but critics say it could discourage some people from voting and delay voting.
Susan Bahren, an Orange County elections commissioner, disagrees: "You have to show ID to do other things; I don't see why you shouldn't have to show ID to vote."

"People wait on line for hours in other countries to vote," she said. "This is a right and privilege that Americans take very lightly, and we need to take it a little more seriously."