It’s Only Voter Fraud if You Catch Us – Except in North Carolina
MEDIA ADVISORY
Voter Integrity Project of NC
919-332-4129
www.VoterIntegrityProject.com
RALEIGH, NC—Today at 9 AM, at the Wake County Public Safety Center, the Wake County Board of Elections staged a hearing to consider removing 18 registered voters from the rolls who had proven to two government agencies that they were not US citizens.
“The Board dismissed three non-US citizens who clearly committed election fraud,” according to Jay DeLancy, Executive Director of Voter Integrity Project of NC (VIP-NC), “and their lame excuse came down to me—an average citizen–not being schooled in the laws of evidence.”
The Wake Election Board had carried over the 18 challenged voters from a June 26, 2012 preliminary hearing after learning that they had all obtained “Legal Presence” (LP) driver’s licenses from the NC Division of Motor Vehicles, a process that requires applicants to prove their status as non-US citizens to the agency.
The challenged voters had also been disqualified from jury duty in the Wake County Court system after proving their non-US citizenship status to the Wake County Courts, according to sworn testimony during the June 26 hearing from Wake Clerk of Courts, Lorrin Freeman.
“Despite the fact that two government agencies agreed these voters were not US citizens,” DeLancy said, “the Board gleefully dismissed our challenges because we didn’t meet their invisible burden of proof!”
DeLancy stormed out of the hearings after the Board voted to dismiss his group’s claim against Ramon Amable Fernandez, a non-US citizen who voted in the 2008 election by absentee ballot after obtaining his LP license and getting disqualified from jury duty.
“Their decision on Fernandez spoke so loudly to me,” he said, “that I just couldn’t tolerate their nonchalant attitude toward clear election fraud, so I left.”
Two other voters listed in the VIP-NC challenge, Viral Patel and Joy Remedios Charity Villicampa, both had facts similar to Fernandez, but they were also dismissed for the group’s failure to meet the burden of proof that the Board required.
Some of the challenged voters will be referred over to the Wake County District Attorney’s office for further investigation, but the three whom DeLancy singled out will all be able to vote in November without even providing a photo ID at the polls.
“These three non-US citizens along with thousands of legally ‘inactive’ voters are vulnerable,” he said, “anybody can walk into the polls, claim to be one of those people and steal another vote.”
The removal process for inactive voters, spelled out in the 1993 Help America Vote Act, requires voters to remain on the rolls unless they don’t vote in two consecutive Presidential elections.
“It’s a sad day when our election laws are so rigged that an average citizen no longer has the ability to get people thrown off the voter rolls who have proven to two separate government agencies that they are not US citizens,” DeLancy said. “After today’s kangaroo court, I fear that we will some become a Banana Republic instead of a Constitutional one.”
VIP-NC is a non-partisan not-for-profit organization that works for “free and fair elections” by researching the voter rolls in order to remove fictitious or other illegally registered voters and by training volunteers to monitor elections at precincts across the state in order to prevent identity theft at the polls and to ensure that no voters are disenfranchised.
Take care as to what you stir up. Under the stand your ground laws, interfering with a person’s right to vote, falls within the finer points of this law.