Feds stalk vote fraud bounty
VOTE FRAUD: Justice Department officials want to cage those who led efforts
NWI Times
Jan 21, 2004
nwitimes.com/news/local/feds-stalk-vote-fraud-bounty/article_c342c6fe-4b9a-5d89-b211-4bb62aa62774.html
HAMMOND -- U.S. Justice Department investigators see Lake County's vote fraud scandal as a big game hunt.
A source close to the U.S. Attorney's office said the federal government is targeting those who directed wholesale vote buying, intimidation or fraud to steal elections in East Chicago and Schererville.
Federal authorities said they suspect a conspiracy took place among East Chicago city officials, County Board of Elections and Registration officials and campaign employees of Mayor Robert Pastrick to coordinate the fraudulent casting of hundreds of absentee ballots in the May 6 Democratic primary. They believe a similar, but smaller, racket took place in Schererville.
Sources within the federal government said the U.S. Attorney's office is under pressure to take over an investigation in Crown Point by a special county grand jury that was at best spinning its wheels and at worst leaking evidence to those under suspicion.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Van Bokkelen is expected to announce as early as this week that he is not conducting a hostile takeover, but rather a merger with Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter and Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter, who were running the special grand jury in Crown Point.
Ned Ruff, an attorney for East Chicago City Councilman George Pabey, D-at large, said Friday their team of private investigators found a surplus of evidence, which was detailed last summer in Special Lake Superior Court Judge Steven King's 104-page opinion on that city's 2003 Democratic primary.
Pabey lost to East Chicago Mayor Robert Pastrick by 278 votes. Pabey contested that result. King heard three weeks of evidence from witnesses collected by Pabey's lawyers, and threw out 155 absentee ballots, leaving Pastrick with a 123-vote majority.
Ruff said they will continue to argue this March before the Indiana Supreme Court that all absentee ballots cast in Pastrick's name should have been thrown out because of what Ruff calls, "a pattern of fraudulent behavior."
"These were not isolated incidents," he said. "It covered the city. It happened to a lot of different people. It was centrally directed fraud in which the poor, young and naive were targeted.
An organized effort
The names of those who reportedly did the targeting were repeated over and over last summer by witnesses.
Ruff said there wasn't any evidence linking Pastrick to the illegal activity.
King's opinion named North Township Trustee Gregory Cvitkovich and Robert Cantrell, former East Chicago Republican chairman, but not as participants in vote fraud.
Rather, King quotes Cvitkovich and Cantrell as saying candidates (like Pastrick) hire hundreds of unofficial poll workers in the expectation they will cast absentee ballots in the name of their paymaster candidate.
Ruff said there was a large amount of evidence that East Chicago's parks department swelled before last year's primary with employees hired not to promote recreation but Pastrick's re-election.
"Park Superintendent Joe Valdez's name came up over and over," Ruff said. We were told park employees were ordered to vote by absentee ballot, because there was a fear they would get drunk on election day and not get to the polls."
Valdez is awaiting trial this summer on charges he and five other East Chicago political figures illegally spent $20 million on sidewalk and other concrete work on private property to curry favor with voters before the 1999 Democratic primary election. He is pleading innocent in that case.
Others named by King as prime players in the East Chicago mayor election include:
* Andrew Callas, who directed Pastrick's campaign, including the collection and photocopying of more than 1,000 absentee ballot applications at Pastrick campaign headquarters before they were sent on to the election board.
* Lake County Councilman Joel Markovich, a precinct committeeman and Pastrick supporter, who admitted hiring 40 people to work at the polls.
* East Chicago Precinct Committeeman Ramon Guillen, who recruited, collected and delivered absentee ballot applications by the dozens, many of them in identical handwriting even though applications are supposed to be filled out only by the voters themselves.
* Alan "Twig" Simmons, a city employee, who was present, according to King, when Lisa Bailey and her mother, Stella Bailey, filled out their ballots. She said Simmons promised to help the two women get jobs and that he would fix Bailey's car.
* Alfred "Bit-a-man" Rodgers, a Pastrick supporter and unsuccessful candidate for City Council, who allegedly promised to pay for an absentee ballot.
* Milan Kesic, who manages a temporary employment service and a Pastrick operative, who obtained 90 absentee ballot applications from his employees and could have had more.
More absentee questions
Allegations in Schererville center on the absentee ballots cast for Schererville Town Judge Deborah Riga and the activities of Bob "Bosko" Grkinich, a Schererville businessman and Democratic committeeman of Schererville's heavily Serbian 10th Precinct.
Riga won the primary by 11 votes, but her nomination was reversed last year by a recount judge who declared challenger Kenneth Anderson the winner after disqualifying 23 absentee ballots in Riga's name.
At the hearing, Anderson's lawyers alleged Grkinich was involved in the illegal possession of absentee ballots and the illegal assistance of absentee voters. Grkinich refused to answer questions about his role in alleged vote fraud on grounds it might incriminate him.
There is no solid indication yet who federal authorities are targeting within the county elections board, but Ruff said Pabey's team believed someone on that staff was helping's Pastrick's campaign.
Ruff said he believes the elections board delayed by several hours reporting their count of nearly 2,000 absentee ballots cast in the East Chicago mayoral primary.
Michael McPhillips, assistant director of the elections department, said the elections board staff from both major parties counted about 7,500 absentee ballots cast throughout the county in the spring of 2003. He said absentee vote totals weren't held back.
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