ICYMI: Lee Zeldin Caught Submitting Thousands Of Fraudulent Signatures In Ballot Application

“This one is not complicated. This is simple, blatant fraud,” says Henry Berger, an election law expert and former New York City councilman

NEW YORK – New reporting from The New York Times reveals more about Lee Zeldin’s scheme to submit fraudulent signatures in his petition to be placed on the Independence Party ballot line. A State Board of Elections investigation found nearly 13,000 photocopied signatures carefully hidden within the pages of his petition. In response to the accusations, campaign manager Eric Amidon claimed “we run a virtually paper-free campaign and don’t even own a copier.”

This is not the first time that Zeldin has engaged in shady election practices. In his 2018 congressional race, Zeldin admitted to mailing out information to voters with an incorrect deadline for submitting their absentee ballots. Reports also cite mailing lists from 2016 including the same mistake.

After voting to overturn the election results in 2020 and pushing Trump’s ‘Big Lie’, Lee Zeldin’s hypocrisy should come as no surprise for a candidate who seems set on deceiving voters for political gain.

Highlights from the story below.

New York Times: For First Time Since 1946, New Yorkers Have Just 2 Choices for Governor

By Jay Root, 7/28/22

[…] Mr. Zeldin and Ms. Hochul will each appear on two party lines: The governor will also run on the Working Families Party line, and Mr. Zeldin will run for the Conservative Party.

But Mr. Zeldin, an underdog in the race, wanted his name under a third party and gathered petitions for the Independence Party line. It did not end well.

The State Board of Elections invalidated Zeldin’s Independence Party application on July 12, after a challenge from the Libertarians and others. An investigation revealed such a high volume of flawed petitions — with duplicates carefully ensconced amid hundreds of otherwise valid pages — that critics say it’s hard to imagine it was an accident.

“The way the pages were distributed throughout the petition, it seems to me that it’s an obvious attempt to put together enough signatures to qualify and to obfuscate the fraud,” said Henry Berger, an election law expert and former New York City councilman. “This one is not complicated. This is simple, blatant fraud.”

[…] Eric Amidon, who describes himself on Twitter as Zeldin’s campaign manager, signed off on all 47 volumes of the petition submitted to the state, affirming in the official paperwork that the submission contained enough signatures to qualify and listing himself as the “contact person to correct deficiencies.”

Mr. Amidon, who gave a Zeldin campaign email address on the petitions, told The New York Times in an email that he was “shocked to hear there were copies placed in the petitions” and said he was “positive no one working for the campaign made any copies.”

“We run a virtually paper-free campaign and don’t even own a copier,” he said. But Mr. Amidon and the Zeldin campaign ignored follow-up questions and wouldn’t say who assembled the petitions, or whether paid vendors helped out.

As the deadline for turning in the signatures drew near in late May, a post on the Facebook page of the far right group Long Island Loud Majority practically begged for help to get the signatures to boost Zeldin’s political fortunes.

“Anyone looking to make some extra money this weekend (30 an hour) and help out OUR NEXT GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK LEE ZELDIN. We need people to get Petitions signed to get Lee on the Independent Line,” the post said. It urged those interested to “contact Jordana at the Zeldin team” and listed an email address affiliated with Zeldin’s campaign website.

Jordana McMahon, a paid Zeldin campaign staffer, was listed as a witness to some of the signature pages, including at least one page that was used twice and got thrown out.

[…] It hasn’t been lost on critics that Mr. Zeldin, as a member of Congress on Jan. 6, voted against the certification of Arizona and Pennsylvania, states that President Biden won. Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul, said that Mr. Zeldin and his advisers were “focused on deceiving voters and undermining elections, whether it’s for governor of New York or president of the United States.”

“It’s no surprise that someone who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election is now attempting to lie and defraud his way onto the Independence Party ballot line,” Mr. Harvey said.

Andrew Kolstee, the Libertarian Party secretary who objected to the Zeldin submission and laid out all his findings on a website called Zeldincopies.com, called for state authorities to find out what happened and punish anyone who broke the law.

“This was a deliberate attempt to defraud the voter, and those involved should be held responsible,” he said.