Updated 12-20-23
Lawrence District A Councilor-Elect, Fidelina Santiago was indicted on the charges of Illegal Voting or Attempt to Vote (4 counts), Conspiracy to Vote or Attempt to Vote Illegally (4 counts), Unlawful Interference with Voter (4 counts), and Obstruction of Voting (4 counts).
Indictments were also returned for Jennifer Lopez on the charges of Illegal Voting or Attempt to Vote (4 counts), Conspiracy to Vote or Attempt to Vote Illegally (4 counts), Unlawful Interference with Voter (4 counts), and Obstruction of Voting (4 counts).
Both women will be arraigned later.
The indictments are the result of an investigation conducted by the Essex County District Attorney’s Office following a referral by the Secretary of State’s Office concerning allegations of fraudulent voting associated with the November 2023 local election.
“Interfering with an election not only undermines the legitimacy of government but erodes the public’s confidence in the process. My office will vigorously prosecute individuals that threaten the integrity of elections.”
This remains an ongoing investigation by the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit assigned to the Essex County District Attorney’s Office.
VIDEO OF STOLEN ABSENTEE
BALLOT ON TOM’S PODCAST
(11-16-23)
ORIGINAL STORY (12-7-23)
Voter Fraud Investigation in Lawrence … AGAIN!
Tom Duggan
Just a few short days before Election Day in Lawrence, a video went viral on social media, reportedly showing a campaign volunteer for a city council candidate stealing absentee ballots from people’s mailboxes.
The video shows a woman – well known in Lawrence political circles, getting out of a red car, going onto a neighbor’s porch with something in her hand to make it look like she is delivering a parcel of mail. But when she gets to the mailbox, she takes out the absentee ballot and then gets back into the red vehicle to drive away.
Sources at the Lawrence Police Department say that the person driving that red vehicle was caught on a city camera at the next intersection after the mailbox theft, and that the person driving the getaway car is one of Lawrence’s newly elected city councilors.
So, I called the new Police Chief, William Castro to ask him if he is investigating this allegation of voter fraud, and whether or not they have a city council candidate on the city cameras driving the getaway car.
Here’s what he said:
“The Lawrence Police Department is presently assisting with an investigation into allegations of mail fraud.”
“The Lawrence Police Department received two complaints about stolen mail-in ballots, and we called the District Attorney’s office, Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s Office, and the Post Office to investigate. Secretary Galvin’s Office has assigned the case to District Attorney Paul Tucker, who is actively investigating the complaint. This is an active investigation.”
Castro would not admit that it was a newly elected councilor caught on the city’s camera system, but one source close to the investigation said that the plate number and occupants of the vehicle have been easily identified.
Experts in election fraud told the Valley Patriot after the incident that even if the voter fraud was committed by a successful candidate for city council, and even if that person is arrested and convicted, there is no mechanism whereby that elected official can be removed from office, or prevented from being sworn in come January.
In fact, no elected official has ever been removed from office – or prevented from taking office – for engaging in voter fraud, or any fraud for that matter.
That means the newly elected councilor who drove the getaway car in this case, can take office in January and serve out the two-year term she was elected to serve, regardless of what the criminal justice system does to her and her cohort for stealing absentee ballots.
DEMOCRATS ADMIT VOTER FRAUD EXITS
The fact that voter fraud is often alleged in the City of Lawrence seems to fly in the face of everything the ruling Democrat Party claims at the national level year after year.
For 19+ years, this newspaper has documented voter fraud in Lawrence, and described in detail various elections where even the elected democrats in Lawence themselves, openly talk about such fraud and how voter ID is needed in the city.
When former Mayor Willie Lantigua ran for reelection and faced challenger Dan Rivera, the Rivera campaign enlisted the help of the entire leadership of the Democrat Party to descend onto Lawrence “to make sure Lantigua doesn’t cheat this time.”
And, when that race was decided by a very close margin in favor of Rivera, a recount took place where, again Rivera’s campaign enlisted the help of every Democrat Party operative in the state to come back to Lawrence and make sure “Willie doesn’t cheat again.”
Now, why would all of that happen if there was no such thing as voter fraud? Why did Niki Tsongas and Marc DiSalvo, and the Secretary of State’s office have to assign political operatives to “make sure Willie doesn’t cheat” if voter fraud doesn’t take place?
RACIST VOTER ID?
Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera, State Rep. Marcos Devers, and even Frank Moran (at the time) all advocated for Voter ID to stop the fraud in Lawrence while their Democrat Party leaders continued to repeat the propaganda talking points that voter ID was “racist” and voter fraud “doesn’t exist.”
Just imagine!
The Democrat Party leaders with all their wealth and white privilege, telling all those Latino voters and elected officials in Lawrence that their efforts to implement voter ID is “racist” and that the voter fraud they see with their own eyes “does not exist.” It’s astounding.
What’s even more astounding is that Dominican citizens can vote in Lawrence for their Dominican president and congress, and cannot vote without showing a voter ID.
EXPOSING THE LIES
The fact is, Lawrence voters have long known voter ID is necessary and that voter fraud exists. Yet they continue to support the Democrat Party despite these lies from their own leaders.
“But Tom,” the ignorant and partisan hacks will say. “Why hasn’t the voter fraud in Lawrence been prosecuted? If all this fraud exists where are the criminal cases?”
It’s because elected officials in the Democrat Party have removed all the mechanism to prosecute or prove most instances of voter fraud. For example: as part of Ted Kennedy’s “Motor Voter” bill, it is illegal for election officials to remind people that they have to be an American citizen to sign up to vote. It’s illegal to question their citizenship or their eligibility.
That means if the election worker knows someone lives in Methuen and is trying to register to vote in Lawrence to affect the next election, there’s literally nothing they can do about it.
Legally, they cannot refuse a voter registration card or even investigate suspected fraud. In fact, they are not even allowed to compare the signature on a mail-in voter registration form with the signatures they already have on file to make sure the new voter registration is legitimate, even if the signature is an obvious forgery.
Furthermore, if you suspect your neighbor is illegally voting and you file a complaint against him, the government charges YOU with voter intimidation instead of investigating the fraudulent voter. So, who is going to bother?
HOW THEY CHEAT
There are a hundred ways to steal votes and change election results. Here at the Valley Patriot, we have witnessed and reported on many of them. The rest of the press won’t pick up our stories because it disproves their political narratives.
In one Lawrence election we watched a volunteer from a mayoral campaign sign up to be an election worker at the polls on election day.
Shortly before the polls closed, she would text her friends the names and addresses of people who had not voted, and with a minute or two left before polls closed, her friends would show up using those names and addresses to get a ballot, and vote.
In another election we watched a mayoral campaign go door to door with the city census – which is a public document. The city census lists all residents including non-voters.
The candidate would knock on doors with a “Motor Voter” card and an absentee ballot application and convince nonvoters to sign up to vote and then request an absentee ballot by mail. This was long before COVID was used as an excuse to increase mail in ballots.
Then the candidate would go back to those addresses after the absentee ballots are mailed so they can “help them” vote. He then offers to drop off their ballot at city hall to save them a stamp. If the new voter didn’t vote for that candidate, those ballots never made it to city hall. If they did, those ballots were hand delivered.
In the meantime, while the candidate’s volunteers were going door to door, anyone with a political sign on their lawn for his opponent, would have their absentee or mail-in ballot taken out of the mailbox (much like the video on social media this year).
When Willie Lantigua first ran for mayor against Dave Abdoo in 2009, Abdoo campaign workers caught Isabel Melendez (Lantigua’s manager) on video handing actual ballots to people outside the Mary Immaculate voting precinct with the names of Lantigua and his slate of candidates already filled out.
Voters would take those ballots into the polling booth with the ballots that were handed to them by the election workers, use the filled in ballot as a template to fill out the blank ballot, and then put BOTH ballots into the voting machine.
The machine only counts one of those ballots, but if there’s a recount or a challenge, all of the ballots in that box – including the fake ones – get taken out and hand-counted. In a close race, those fraudulent ballots make all the difference.
I suspect that happened again this year as Lawrence City Councilor Rich Russell has now reported a discrepancy in the total number of ballots cast.
“After looking at the purge list and the ‘official results’ of the election, I find that according to the official results, 5,169 ballots were cast; yet when I look at the ‘purge list’ I find that only 5,021 residents of Lawrence voted, for a difference of 148 votes.”
The “purged list” is the list of names crossed off on election day as each voter gives their name and address to election workers.
Considering one Lawrence City Council race was decided by only 5 votes, and several other races were decided by less than 100 votes, those additional 148 ballots would have made all the difference.
DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH
Having said all of this, it’s pretty clear, that the woman in the video stealing absentee ballots and the city council candidate driving the getaway car will probably face no consequences for committing election fraud.
If the Democrat Secretary of State, and the Democrat District Attorney, and the Democrat Attorney General – were to actually file charges and make a public claim of election fraud against these two political operatives, it would blow the Democrat Party narrative that voter fraud is nothing but a “Republican talking point.”
They would have to publicly interview witnesses in court about HOW elections are – and have been – stolen in Lawrence over the years, and who has been responsible for said fraud.
Trust me when I tell you, NOBODY in government wants that to happen. Nobody.
So, you can bet that once again, this will all go away quietly, and end up among the many stories people tell about all the stolen elections in Lawrence. All the while the media and the Democrat Party repeat the lie that voter fraud doesn’t exist.
In the meantime, I want to encourage every level of law enforcement to defy the political puppet -masters of the Democrat Party and expose every single detail of the many instances of voter fraud that have taken place in Lawrence over the last few years.
But I’m not holding my breath. ◊