Election Officials Allege Possible Voter Fraud in Republican Primary

New York|Election Officials Allege Possible Voter Fraud in Republican Primary

The New York City Board of Elections asked prosecutors on Friday to investigate possible ballot stuffing and votes being cast by dead people in a hotly contested City Council race in southern Brooklyn.

After a second day of hand recounting on Friday, George Sarantopoulos, a businessman, led Richie Barsamian, chairman of the Republican Party in Brooklyn, by a mere 16 votes in the G.O.P. primary in District 47.

Particularly troubling for election authorities was the late discovery of 22 paper ballots that officials said were not scanned by the voting machines on election night. The surprise comes on the heels of a report in The New York Post that two absentee ballots were cast by voters who are dead and another by a man who said he did not vote and has no primary voting history going back to the 1980s.

One of the dead voters would be 107 years old, the other 101, records show.

The board tossed out the 22 potentially fraudulent ballots, but under a 2021 New York state election law modification, the absentee ballots of dead people and of the man who never actually voted were included in the totals because there is no way to tell which candidates benefited. That is because the envelopes with the absentee voters’ names are separated from the actual ballots when they are counted.

After conducting an internal investigation, the board formally referred the matter to the office of Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney. The office declined to comment.

“While any attempt to compromise the electoral process is deeply troubling, this case underscores the strength of the Board’s existing safeguards,” the election board said in a statement posted on X. “These irregularities were identified early, investigated thoroughly, and resolved swiftly.”