Times Herald-Record | Sunday, October 26, 2014 10 378908 22205

SUNDAY | October 26, 2014 | $2 | Local breaking news at recordonline.com CATSKILLS0 078908 22206

SERVING THE CATSKILLS AND HUDSON VALLEY

EXPANSION OF NEWBURGH BUS SERVICE ON WAY PAGE 3

THE KIRYAS JOELELECTION MACHINE■ A history of voter fraud■ Allegations of poll-watcher harassment■ Hundreds of questioned signatures PAGES 4-7

A Kiryas Joel resident votes during the September 2013 primaries.JIM SABASTIAN/FOR THE TIMES HERALD-RECORD

BIG SAVINGS INSIDE

SUPER COUPONS

$225VALLEY CENTRAL PULLS OFF RARE FOOTBALL WIN VS. WARWICK PAGE 71

4 Sunday, October 26, 2014 | Times Herald-Record

VOTING IN KIRYAS JOEL

By Chris McKennaTimes Herald-Record

he stakes were high last November when a team of poll watch-ers dispatched by the

United Monroe citizens group ventured into a banquet hall and medical building where more than 6,000 Kiryas Joel voters would cast ballots.

United Monroe had been cam-paigning hard for a slate of Town Board candidates running on its ballot line, hoping to wrest con-trol of a deeply unpopular board by outvoting the Hasidic com-munity’s powerful voting blocs. Kiryas Joel’s leaders, meanwhile, had every reason to elect board allies and thwart a nemesis of

theirs running in another impor-tant contest that day: the race for Orange County executive.

What unfolded in the two poll-ing stations that day sparked new interest in election oversight and suspected voter fraud in Kiryas Joel, longstanding issues that had been out of the headlines and scrutiny of authorities for more than a decade. That rekindled controversy continued through a primary election and lawsuit last month, and soon could extend into another voting showdown looming for the Nov. 4 general election.

The Times Herald-Record documented voter fraud in Kiryas Joel twice in the 1990s and once in 2001, triggering investiga-tions — and, in one case, a stern

grand-jury report — but no prosecutions. Village officials responded each time by saying that the number of proven impro-prieties was paltry and that they didn’t condone them.

United Monroe’s leaders knew about the past problems when preparing for last year's town elections, and wanted its poll watchers in Kiryas Joel to watch voters sign in and challenge those whose signatures looked nothing like the originals — known as exemplars — in the poll books, generally reproduced from voters’ registration cards.

It proved to be a contentious day in Kiryas Joel.

In a series of sworn statements later delivered to authori-ties, United Monroe members

described tense encounters with another group of poll watchers who o! cially represented di" er-ent parties but were seemingly aligned against them. They say their adversaries berated and harassed them for questioning mismatched signatures, accusing them of intimidating or disen-franchising voters.

Next came a confl ict in August over requests to allow people other than Kiryas Joel residents to work in the village as election inspectors, the paid workers who oversee the poll books, distribute ballots and rule on voter chal-lenges. The Board of Elections

initially granted those requests for the Sept. 9 primary but then rescinded them. The spurned inspectors immediately filed a discrimination lawsuit, which ended on an ambiguous note last week as another heated election approaches.

Watching the watchersThe stakes last November were

even higher than United Monroe leaders could have realized at the time. As public documents have since revealed, Kiryas Joel o! -cials knew then that a group of Hasidic property owners would soon petition the Town Board to

KEEPING WATCH On primary day in September 2014, the voter turnout was light in Kiryas Joel, but poll watchers were busy. Orange County Board of Elections observer Richard Robillard, left; a representative from the Dan Castricone campaign, Horacio Fernandez; and Orange County Board of Elections Commissioner David Green were working with a voter whose signature, name withheld, was challenged by the Castricone campaign. JIM SABASTIAN/FOR THE TIMES HERALD-RECORD

Inside Kiryas Joel’s election machine

The village’s powerful voting blocs can swing elections, but critics claim they also break the rules

T

shift 507 acres of Monroe into Kiryas Joel — a long-anticipated move to expand the densely populated community. That annexation request landed in the Monroe clerk’s o! ce on Dec. 27, days before Kiryas Joel’s endorsed candidate, Harley Doles, took o! ce as town supervisor.

Emily Convers, who led United Monroe’s ticket as its supervisor candidate and is now the group’s chairwoman, recalls she and other leaders instructing their

poll watchers to be sparing in their voter challenges — questioning only signatures t h a t l o o k e d completely dif-ferent — and to avoid any

confrontations.“We instructed all of our

watchers: Be conservative, be respectful, be Gandhi,” she said. "We were extremely cautious."

The rival poll watchers who United Monroe’s volunteers say confronted them during the elec-tion included two women whose poll-watcher certificates show that Doles enlisted them.

Several affidavits watchers gave authorities this spring also described encounters with Lang-don Chapman, an attorney and longtime aide to state Sen. John Bonacic, a Mount Hope Repub-lican. United Monroe members knew Chapman for his role as attorney for the Monroe Town Board, whose members they were attempting to unseat. But he had another reason to watch the watchers in Kiryas Joel: He was involved with Steve Neuhaus’ campaign for county executive. Neuhaus, the Republican candi-date, had been endorsed by both Kiryas Joel voting blocs over Democrat Roxanne Donnery — a longtime foe of the village lead-ers — and could expect a fl ood of votes there that day.

Officially, Chapman was in Kiryas Joel on behalf of the Orange County Republican Committee, whose chairman at the time, Robert Krahulik, had signed his poll-watcher certifi cate.

“Way to go, United Monroe, disenfranchising the voters,” poll watcher Greg Gilligan recalled Chapman calling out. In another affidavit, poll watcher Steve Pavia said Chapman accused him of “a pattern of hate” after

he challenged two consecutive voters. A third poll watcher, Dale Lander, said that Chapman repeatedly yelled at her after she asked him who he was and why he was there, shouting at such close range at one point that “his spit was hitting my face.”

Chapman, who was appointed Orange County attorney after Neuhaus won the election, denies accusing poll watchers of disen-franchising voters or engaging in a “pattern of hate.” He recalls “one person who was very aggres-sive with me at one point,” but disputes Lander’s description of their encounter.

In a phone interview and an email message, Chapman said he spent four to fi ve hours at the two polling stations in Kiryas

Joel, the only place in the county where he said he observed voting that day. He said he saw no prob-lems with the voter challenges he witnessed other than when poll watchers didn’t specify why they were objecting.

“That would cause a delay in voting as it appeared the inspec-tors were trying to understand the basis of the challenge so they could make a decision,” Chapman wrote. “Those challenges, without

any reason initially given, created unnecessary tension between voters, election o! cials, and poll watchers.”

He added: “If you are going to challenge someone’s right to vote, it’s helpful to be able to explain why, so the inspectors can make a prompt decision without slowing down other voters.”

The United Monroe a! davits recount a few episodes that fed poll watchers’ suspicions of fraud. Gilligan, for instance, said the Kiryas Joel residents working as inspectors at his voting table once dismissed a signature dis-crepancy by saying the original was written 20 years ago. But the woman who had just signed the poll book then said she was only 24 year old, and left without

further attempting to vote.In another incident, poll

watcher Frank Borowski said he questioned a voter he had seen at the polling station earlier that morning — and easily recognized because he had something stuck in his beard — and was told by an inspector that the man hadn’t voted already. In the ensuing commotion, the man stormed out without voting.

Poll watchers say it became nearly impossible to watch and compare signatures as evening fell and growing crowds of voters streamed into the banquet hall that serves as Kiryas Joel’s main polling station.

“The pace quickened,” Gilligan

Times Herald-Record | Sunday, October 26, 2014 5VOTING IN KIRYAS JOEL

wo days before an unprec-e d e n t e d m u n i c i p a l election in Kiryas Joel in

2001, lawyers for a slate of can-didates challenging the village’s elected leaders for the fi rst time in Kiryas Joel’s history went to court to head off what they predicted would be large-scale fraud by their opponents’ side to preserve its grip on power.

In court papers thick with birth and death certificates, school enrollment records and sworn statements, the candidates and their attorneys questioned the eli-gibility of 518 of the village’s 5,110 registered voters, saying they had moved out of Kiryas Joel or died, or were younger than 18 but had falsifi ed their birth dates to vote.

After intense legal wrangling about how the voting would be over-seen, the election took place on June 6, and Mayor Abraham Wieder and his two running mates won handily, by margins of around 650 votes.

An investigation by the Times Herald-Record afterward con-firmed that 32 17-year-olds had registered with moved-up birth dates shortly before the election, and that eight had then voted. Most of their registration cards had been fi lled out on a computer before the children signed them and later delivered en masse to the county Board of Elections, suggesting that an adult was behind the deception.

The Record counted 12 clearly fraudulent votes in all and 28 others that were questionable

because the voters lived in Brook-lyn — and, in many cases, had voted there six months earlier — or for other reasons. The fi nd-ings lent some credence to the opposition slate’s fraud warnings, although the number of improper votes that could be substantiated was far too small to question the election’s outcome.

The Record story triggered an Orange County grand jury inves-tigation that lasted six months and concluded with a report declaring that voting irregularities in Kiryas Joel “may have had a serious and deleterious impact on the integrity of the election system.” No one was indicted, but the jury recom-mended state-level reforms to combat voting fraud, including the creation of a statewide voter database.

At the time, an attorney for Kiryas Joel blasted the June 2002 report as a “political polemic” and a “sweeping attack on the village’s integrity,” noting that the eight underage students who voted made up “0.18 percent” of the 4,400 voters who cast ballots.

Francis Phillips II, who was then Orange County’s district attorney, replied that irregular-ities undoubtedly take place in Kiryas Joel elections, although their scope was debatable.

“It’s clear that it happens on an almost regular basis,” Phillips told the Record in July 2002.

— Chris McKenna

Fraud claims in 2001 election

LOOKING BACK This 2001 Times Herald-Record investigation detailed voting fraud in Kiryas Joel, including 32 17-year-olds who had registered to vote using falsified birth dates.

k-ad er d-he gs, er ed he

anes-nd ngas

nd ty

nem-

o g r

r 2dstd

ps LOOKING BACK 200

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

Doles Convers

T

Chapman

6 Sunday, October 26, 2014 | Times Herald-Record

VOTING IN KIRYAS JOEL

recalled in his sworn statement. “During this time, the election inspectors continued to hand the voters their ballots as soon as they signed their names but before I had a chance to verify the signatures.”

By then, he said, the room was “full of unsupervised voters” and “very chaotic,” with voters looking over each others’ shoulders and exchanging sample ballots with the names of endorsed candidates highlighted.

The sample ballots are a staple of village elections, created by

each of Kiryas Joel’s two politi-cal parties and handed to voters as they head to the polls to ensure a solid voting bloc. Election com-missioners say voters are allowed to carry such materials inside for their own guidance, but cannot leave or exchange them in voting areas, as they reportedly did last year.

Mismatched signaturesThe election went Kiryas Joel’s

way.Doles and the other Monroe

candidates supported by vil-lage leaders crushed the United Monroe contenders by 800-vote

margins, despite massive turn-out for the United Monroe slate everywhere outside of Kiryas Joel. And Neuhaus handily beat Donnery in the county executive race, with the votes going 6,469-20 in his favor in Kiryas Joel -- a typically lopsided outcome for elections there.

For all the controversy, the actual number of voters United Monroe’s poll watchers formally challenged was modest — 25, out of nearly 6,700 votes cast in Kiryas Joel over 15 hours. The county’s election commissioners, Sue Bahren and David Green, say they know of no challenged voters

who were stopped from casting ballots.

Sher i ff ’s deput ies la ter invest igated the 25 chal-lenges, concluded that 22 were unfounded and referred three others to the District Attorney’s O! ce for further investigation, the election commissioners said.

Several weeks after the elec-tion, United Monroe members pored over Kiryas Joel’s poll books, comparing exemplars to Election Day signatures and

marking down those that didn’t match. They came up with 838. This spring, they sent a spread-sheet with those voters’ names, as well as a! davits from seven poll watchers, to four agencies: the Orange County District Attor-ney’s Office, the state Board of Elections, the FBI and the state Moreland Commission, which is now defunct.

No actions have resulted from that. In an interview this month, District Attorney David

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE ENSURING THE VOTE Kiryas Joel’s political parties distribute sample ballots to voters as they head to the polls to ensure a solid voting bloc.

Times Herald-Record | Sunday, October 26, 2014 7VOTING IN KIRYAS JOEL

Hoovler said there was “insuf-ficient evidence” of a crime in United Monroe’s materials, and no way of identifying someone who may have voted in another voter’s name — if that, in fact, happened in some cases.

“The fact that two signatures are irregular — it’s problematic,” Hoovler said. But investigating further is futile, he said, because “we don’t know who signed the fi rst or the second.”

Hoovler, a Republican who ran on a ticket with Neuhaus last year and also had the support of both Kiryas Joel blocs, said the

controversy has spurred one new policy for his office: two prosecutors will be made avail-able on election days to help County Attor-ney Langdon

Chapman’s o! ce with any poll-ing-station problems throughout the county.

In New York, voters are essen-tially on the honor system when they register and again when they sign in to vote. Nationally, Republicans and Democrats have been fi ghting in statehouses and the courts over a wave of recent laws states have enacted to require voters to present photo identification when they show up at the polls. No such debate is taking place in Albany, although a photo ID bill co-sponsored by state Sen. William Larkin Jr. — a Republican whose district includes Monroe — has gathered dust in the Senate for the last few years.

The possibility of voting in someone else’s place, or voter impersonation, recalls two Kiryas Joel voting investigations by the Times Herald-Record in the 1990s.

In 1996, the Record showed that on 120 occasions in preced-ing years, votes were cast in two places on the same date under the names of former Kiryas Joel yeshiva students who had reg-istered to vote in Brooklyn but remained on the voting rolls in Orange County. A year later, the newspaper reported 47 more instances. Whether a single voter had cast votes illegally in both places or was impersonated in one was unclear.

In many cases, the signatures in Kiryas Joel’s poll books looked di" erent than the ones on record

for those voters, suggesting that someone in Kiryas Joel had exploited an obsolete voting slot. Indeed, three of the men who had ostensibly voted in two places on the same day told the Record that they lived in Brooklyn and didn’t cast the recent votes made in their names in Kiryas Joel, where they had attended school years earlier.

A sampling of Kiryas Joel’s poll books by the Times Her-ald-Record after the November 2013 election found numerous mismatched signatures. None of the voters contacted by a reporter recently about the signature discrepancies returned phone messages. One, reached on his cell phone, hung up.

Inspector lawsuit Hoping to strengthen their

ability to monitor voting, a group of Monroe residents asked the county Board of Elections this year to assign them to work in Kiryas Joel as election inspec-tors, starting with the Sept. 9 primaries. On the ballot that day were contests for the vacant Assembly seat that represents Monroe — a race colored by fervent opposition to the annex-ation proposal property owners submitted in December. United Monroe was backing one of the

four Republican contenders, Dan Castricone, who had taken a strong stance against an expan-sion of Kiryas Joel.

The county’s Republican elec-tion commissioner, David Green, declined to appoint inspectors from outside Kiryas Joel, while his Democratic counterpart, Sue Bahren, agreed to try to include one nonresident among the four inspectors at each voting table in the polling stations. She later reversed that decision and rescinded the appointments of six Monroe residents she had assigned to Kiryas Joel, according to court papers fi led in a subse-quent lawsuit.

In that case, brought by civil-rights attorney Michael Sussman, nine Monroe residents who had asked to work in Kiryas Joel con-tend the county’s refusal to allow outside inspectors in Kiryas Joel amounted to religious discrimi-nation, and ask the court to prohibit that practice. The suit suggests Bahren’s canceled her initial assignments at the behest of the county legal department that Chapman now runs.

In a response submitted to state Supreme Court on Oct. 10, an attorney for the Poughkeepsie fi rm hired to defend the county and its Board of Elections argued that fi ve of the plainti" s had no

standing, that Bahren’s initial assignment of outside inspectors had been invalid under state law because Green hadn’t agreed to them, and that the plaintiffs couldn’t claim discrimination because they didn’t belong to a “protected class.”

When the Times Herald-Record asked this month if Kiryas Joel o! cials had any objection to outside election inspectors, Village Administrator Gedalye Szegedin e" ectively said they did, alluding to the Hasidic commu-nity’s unique cultural practices and native Yiddish language in an emailed statement provided by the village’s public-relations fi rm.

The statement read, “As a Vil-lage official with the focus on ensuring the community is well served, and like other Orange County-based communities, I favor the appointment of elec-tions inspectors who have a familiarity with the cultural sen-sitivities and customs of their neighbors, as well as the abil-ity to speak the language of the residents. I am confi dent in the ability of the court to protect the integrity of the electoral process.”

But leaving nothing to chance, Kiryas Joel filed court papers last Monday seeking to inter-vene as a party in the lawsuit against the county. The village’s motion said it had an interest in “ensuring that Yiddish-speaking election inspectors continue to be assigned to election dis-tricts in Kiryas Joel,” and that its residents’ voting rights “are not trampled on at the whim of an adverse political movement.”

One day later, state Supreme Justice Maria Rosa delivered a mixed ruling, declaring on one hand that the board's refusal to place outside inspectors in Kiryas Joel was "arbitrary and capri-cious" and that the board must reinstate the six plainti" s whose assignments had been rescinded. But she doesn't specify in her ruling where they should work, and found no immediate grounds for a discrimination claim.

The confl ict over election over-sight was muted during the Sept. 9 primaries, in which turnout was relatively light in Kiryas Joel and United Monroe’s poll watchers made a modest number of chal-lenges without resistance from any other parties. But bigger turnout — with the potential for more disagreements — is likely to come in the Nov. 4 general elec-tion for state and federal o! ces, which include a congressional race, the governor’s race and an Assembly contest that has a charged undertone in Monroe because of the pending annexa-tion proposal.

Three candidates are running for the vacant 98th Assembly District seat next week, two of whom — Republican Karl Bra-benec and Democrat Elisa Tutini — won primaries in September with the support of Kiryas Joel’s voting blocs. Castricone, a former county legislator from Tuxedo, lost the Republican primary to Brabenec, but is running on the United Monroe ballot line and has made his opposition to Kiryas Joel’s proposed expansion his central campaign issue.

United Monroe has been rally-ing voters to support Castricone and Dennis McWatters, who’s running for a vacant Town Board seat on the United Monroe line against a Democrat supported by Kiryas Joel’s leadership. The group recently sent out an email appeal to its supporters, asking for election day volunteers.

— cmckenna@th-record.com

QUESTIONABLE SIGNATURES A Times Herald-Record review of voter sign-in sheets from the November 2013 elections found numerous cases in which a voter’s signature, right, did not match the signature on file.

Green Bahren

Hoovler