Despite being continually told that voter fraud never happens, it somehow continues to rear its head. The latest incident comes to us from Rensselaer County in New York, located just outside the state Capital of Albany. Several people connected to the local Republican Party have been indicted on felony conspiracy charges associated with violating the rights of voters during the 2021 election. This comes on the heels of a guilty plea entered by former Rensselaer County Elections Commissioner Jason Schofield in January. In June of last year, Republican Troy City Councilor Kim Ashe-McPherson similarly pleaded guilty. And you probably won’t be terribly surprised to learn that the fraud in question was accomplished using the massive piles of mail-in ballots that were issued during the height of the pandemic. (WAMC News)

Three Rensselaer County officials with close ties to the ruling Republican Party were indicted last week on federal charges as part of an investigation into ballot fraud. Now, the current and former mayors of the city of Rensselaer are weighing in.

According to the U.S. Attorney, Richard Crist, James Gordon, and Leslie Wallace were arrested and charged Thursday with conspiring to violate the rights of county voters during the 2021 election cycle.

The alleged ballot scheme in Troy appears to have taken advantage of looser absentee ballot requirements that were in place during the pandemic.

Rich Mooney, the former Democratic Mayor of the neighboring city of Rensselaer, is taking credit for the investigation because he claims that he and his team were the first ones to notice some fishy ballots during the recount of the 2021 election and he reported them to law enforcement, spurring the investigation. Mooney wound up losing the election and current Republican Mayor Mike Stammel is accusing him of “sour grapes” because he lost.

But that’s a pretty tough argument to make when two people have already pleaded guilty and three more have been indicted on federal charges. There was clearly something going on during that election that shouldn’t have been happening.

The method they used wasn’t even particularly clever. They requested a significant number of ballots in the names of other people, filled them out, and sent them in. One voter filed a complaint after being told at the polling place that he had already voted by mail. He said he had never requested a ballot. The total number of fraudulent votes cast may never be known.

This should be yet another reminder about all of this mail-in voting that’s become so popular. Republicans are now being told by leaders at the national level that the Democrats won in 2022 because of how well they utilized early voting, voting by mail, and ballot harvesting. So now they want the GOP to do the same if they want a chance to win next time. Perhaps that’s the only way to succeed, but this example from New York State should be setting off some alarms. The more complicated you make the voting process, the easier it will be for people to cheat. And this episode from upstate New York proves that when the opportunity presents itself, some people will take advantage of it.