FBI will examine absentee ballots
Judge orders records of Currie's 'ambassadors' kept as fed probe into allegations of Detroit voter fraud widens.
Detroit City Clerk Jackie Currie, right, and state Bureau of Elections director Chris Thomas watch absentee ballots being counted at Cobo Hall. Thomas was appointed co-receiver Tuesday.
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DETROIT -- FBI agents obtained a court order just before polls closed Tuesday preserving all absentee ballots and other records involving city Clerk Jackie Currie's election ambassadors as part of a probe into possible Detroit voter fraud.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Helland told Chief Wayne County Circuit Judge Mary Beth Kelly that the records from Currie's "Project Vote" operations are needed as federal agents move forward in an investigation of "absentee ballots improperly voted" in this election.
Kelly said she had already heard and seen ample "uncontested evidence" of voting irregularities in a lawsuit filed after the primary election by Maureen Taylor, a write-in City Council candidate. A Detroit News story Sunday also raised questions about the integrity of Detroit's absentee ballots and Currie's system of providing election assistants to help the elderly and the infirm to vote by absentee ballot.
The FBI made the request around 4 p.m. via state Bureau of Elections director Chris Thomas, who was appointed by Kelly as a co-receiver of the absentee ballot process. The state then contacted the chief judge.
The hearing began at 5:30 p.m. The polls closed at 8 p.m.
Helland said the FBI wants preserved all the returned absentee ballots, the ballot applications and envelopes, phone logs for the ambassadors, payroll records and the weekly work records that document where and when ambassadors went to assist with and collect ballots.
"We want to ensure these ballots are not ... tampered with," said Helland, head of the U.S. attorney's special prosecutions unit.
The judge previously ordered the state and county to monitor the counting and handling of absentee ballots in the general election.
Under her original order, once the vote count was finalized, the ballots would have been returned to the city clerk. Under the new order, the ballots will be held indefinitely at the secretary of state's Detroit office for investigation by the FBI.
Of interest to the Justice Department, Helland said, are allegations that dead people are voting and that balloting improprieties occurred at nursing homes. He said the Justice Department has received several phone calls about alleged improprieties.
About 50,000 absentee ballots were mailed out for this election.
Investigations were launched following The Detroit News report that illustrated how legally incapacitated nursing home residents were being coaxed to vote, that people were voting from abandoned nursing homes and vacant lots, that the city's voting rolls were inflated with more than 300,000 names of people who had died or moved out of the city; and the ambassadors had a practice of hand-delivering ballots from senior citizens and disabled voters that were filled out in private meetings with Currie's paid election workers.
Taylor testified last week that one ambassador, former state Rep. Nelis Saunders, said she could "virtually guarantee" an election win for $1,100.
Then on Friday, a Bureau of Elections worker testified that she saw an ambassador coax a confused nursing home resident to complete an absentee ballot.
Ambassador Gracie Allen asked twice, "Do you want to vote for Jackie?" and when the resident failed to respond, the election worker marked the ballot, according to the testimony.
Currie did not attend the hearing, but her attorney Steve Reifman said this is nothing more than an attempt to thwart the voting rights of African-Americans in Detroit.
Reifman had filed a motion Tuesday morning with the Michigan Court of Appeals to halt the use of monitors and other measures Kelly had ordered; the court rejected his request.
Meanwhile, outside Kelly's courtroom before the hearing began, Currie's $1,000-per-week adviser, Leonard Young, was arrested by Wayne County deputies for outstanding child support issues. A search of court records revealed Young has been involved in numerous disputes over child support payments. Meanwhile, the counting of the absentee ballots, as of 7 p.m., has gone "very well, smoothly and orderly," said secretary of state spokeswoman Kelly Chesney.
Normally, the city's counting of ballots takes several days or longer -- in the August primary the count of absentee ballots was not complete until 11 days after the election, despite a state law requiring the final counts to be turned in by 11 a.m. the day after the election. But with state and county monitors overseeing the absentee ballot process, "I haven't received any indication that results will dramatically delayed," Chesney said.
Before the FBI got involved, the state had been working with the county and the city to identify ballots touched by Currie's controversial ambassadors. Only 1,500 had been identified, Chesney said.
Many more are actually handled by the ambassadors, but it may be impossible to determine which ones because the city does not keep accurate records on votes that are assisted by ambassadors, despite a state law requiring such record keeping.
Elliot Hall, one of the special monitors appointed by Kelly to review the election, said operations appeared "to be running smoothly."
He said he and Charlie Williams, the other monitor, hope to have their investigation completed by Dec.15 as to why Currie violated a court order in September that barred her from sending out absentee ballot applications.
Traditionally, ballots in Detroit have been difficult to recount because ballot boxes are tainted. In the August primary, 40 of 106 ballot precincts could not be recounted after two requests because of problems such as broken ballot box seals or numbers of ballots not matching the number recorded on election night.
It is unclear how the state and county receivers and court-appointed monitors will affect the integrity of the ballots this year.
You can reach David Josar at (313) 222-2073 or djosar@ detnews.com.
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