The Board of Elections certified the results of the District 47 Republican primary election on Tuesday as some of its own employees allegedly came under fire for voter fraud.
George Sarantopoulos has officially eked out a razor-thin 16-vote win over Richie Barsamian, the chair of the Brooklyn Republican Party. He is expected to face Democratic nominee Kayla Santosuosso in the November general election for term-limited sitting Council Member Justin Brannan’s seat.
The certification came days after the BOE announced it had discovered two separate incidents of alleged voter fraud in the race and referred both to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office for further investigation.
The slim margin between the two candidates — Sarantopoulos was leading by just 15 votes as of July 1 — triggered an automatic hand recount, which began last week.
On July 22, Board of Elections staff discovered 22 suspicious ballots inside ballot bins at the agency’s Brooklyn facility, sources told the Brooklyn Paper.
All 22 ballots were from one election district — comprising the Amalgamated Warbasse Houses in Coney Island — said Sal Berrera, chief clerk of the BOE’s Brooklyn office, at the July 29 BOE meeting. All came from the same scanner, and none had been counted on Election Day.
The ballots were invalidated after an internal investigation, which could not attribute them to individual voters, Berrera said. The board separately discovered that multiple absentee ballots had been cast in the names of dead voters. At least one absentee ballot is also believed to have been cast in the name of a living Brooklynite who did not participate in the primary.
The fraudulent absentee ballots were counted, since ballots are separated from the envelopes they arrive in before being tallied, and it would have been impossible to determine which ballots were fraudulent.
Aaron Foldenauer, an election lawyer representing Sarantopoulos, believes there may have been interference within the BOE.
“These [22 votes] were never counted,” he said. “They were not counted on election night, they were not counted in the various ranked-choice voting algorithms … therefore, it does appear that these ballots were stuffed in a ballot box late. It further appears that one or more Board of Elections employees may have been involved.”
According to news outlet THE CITY, law enforcement has seized computers and phones from several BOE workers in the district.
Standing in front of the BOE commissioners on Tuesday, Sarantopoulos thanked the voters and BOE workers who “sprung into action to protect voters.”
“Additionally, I understand there are employees at the BOE who are being investigated,” Sarantopoulos said. “They need to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and I hope the Brooklyn DA moves ahead with a full investigation to achieve that.”
BOE spokesperson Vincent M. Ignizio said the board had “turned over all relevant documentation to the DA’s office for review and documentation,” and “will work closely with the DA and his staff to provide any additional materials they may need from us.” He declined to comment further.
Brooklyn Paper could not reach Barsamian, and his campaign did not return multiple requests for comment. In a July 23 statement, he said his team had been “working hard” at the Board of Elections.”
“My instructions to them have been to make certain that every legal vote counts, and illegal votes are kept out of the count,” he said. “There are reports of votes being cast in the names of people who are dead. This is illegal. It is fraud that hurts every legitimate voter.”
He added that he had instructed his lawyers to “pursue this and obtain the action of law enforcement.”
As chair of the Brooklyn GOP, Barsamian likely had the authority to appoint BOE staffers.
John Ciampoli, a lawyer working with Barsamian, said he was at the Brooklyn BOE warehouse last week when the 22 fraudulent ballots were discovered — and took issue with how staff handled the process.
“I expected that the Board would follow the law and the ballots in question would come to the canvassing table,” he said. “Instead, we were told ‘No, you can’t see them. We’re not telling you how they’re marked. We’re not telling you what the results of our investigation are, but we’re telling you that we’re invalidating these ballots.’”
He felt the canvassers should have been given more information about the issues discovered — and a chance to contest the board’s reasons for invalidating the ballots. There is a chance they were valid, he said.
Both Ciampoli and Foldenauer said they had been told that most of the invalidated ballots had been cast for Barsamian. If they had been counted, they could have pushed Barsamian to victory.
“I have great faith in Richie Barsamian in that he had nothing to do with anything that could remotely be fraudulent,” Ciampoli said. “I truly believe his opponents would stop pummeling the man.”
Earlier this month, Sarantopoulos filed a lawsuit against the BOE and Barsamian, alleging the election had been riddled with fraud. The suit claims voters had cast ballots under different names both in-person at the polls and absentee, and that results from some poll sites had not been included in the unofficial vote count released after election day.
That lawsuit is likely to be dropped now that the election has been certified and the alleged fraud is being investigated, Foldenauer explained.
“The investigation, really, is about bringing any wrongdoers to justice,” he said. “Given the ways in which both internal actors at the Board of Elections and external actors can game the system, it’s important that these fraud cases are thoroughly investigated by law enforcement and prosecuted.”
