Some Hope and Some Crap

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flockofseagulls104
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#26 Post by flockofseagulls104 » Fri May 06, 2022 9:23 pm

jarnon wrote:
Fri May 06, 2022 7:19 pm
Philadelphia Inquirer wrote:A mail ballot mystery is unfolding at an otherwise unremarkable post office box in South Philadelphia.

City elections officials last week received applications from more than three dozen Republican voters across a pocket of the neighborhood. Those applications requested that mail ballots be delivered not to the voters’ homes, but to P.O. Box 54705, an address registered to a recently formed GOP political action committee, according to state data.

Many of those voters told The Inquirer they have no idea why their ballots were sent there. Some said they never even applied to vote by mail.

And yet one out of every six Republican ballot requests in the 26th Ward — the section of deep South Philly south of Passyunk Avenue and west of Broad Street that voted twice for Donald Trump — listed the post office box. That made it the largest single destination for ballots in the city other than nursing homes or elections offices.

“This doesn’t even make any sense,” said Rose DeSantis, 35, who was surprised when told by a reporter that a ballot she says she never requested had been sent to the P.O. box this week. “You would think that would raise some red flags.”

At a time when Republican lawmakers and candidates have attacked mail voting and falsely portrayed it as rife with abuse, the ballot requests and interviews with voters reveal an effort by one GOP operative to use mail ballots that may violate or at least push the boundaries of state law.

For example, the mailing address portion of the form — where the P.O. box was written — is in a visibly different handwriting from the rest of the form on many of the applications, according to two sources who have reviewed the documents. And that handwriting appears on multiple forms, suggesting that the same person wrote in the P.O. box for the voters.

The Philadelphia City Commissioners Office, which oversees elections, said it was aware of the situation and had been “actively monitoring” the issue.

”After we were presented with the additional information by The Philadelphia Inquirer … we began the process of contacting [voters] to determine if they desired a replacement ballot to be sent to an address where they can directly receive it,” said Nick Custodio, deputy to Lisa Deeley, the chair of the city commissioners.

Some ballots had already been sent out to the P.O. box; those will be set aside for the commissioners to review when they’re returned, Custodio said.

The District Attorney’s Office is also aware of the issue and “that there are inconsistencies with the handwriting” on the applications, spokesperson Jane Roh said.

The ballots appear to be the effort of one man: Billy Lanzilotti, a 23-year-old GOP operative, South Philadelphia ward leader, and chairman of the Republican Registration Coalition, the PAC he registered at the P.O. box earlier this year.

In an interview, he said everything about the situation was legal and appropriate.

“I didn’t do anything that to my understanding was against the law,” he said.

Lanzilotti, who already runs a nearby ward, also wants to become the Republican leader for the 26th Ward. Aiming “to help pump out the Republican voter turnout,” he said, he began going door-to-door earlier this month and signing up residents of the 26th to vote by mail.

He’d hand them a form on which he or people he works with had already filled out the voter’s name and his P.O. box as the destination, he said. Having the ballots sent there was a “convenience to the voter,” he said, so it could be hand-delivered to them later by someone they trusted.

“There’s been a number of problems with the post office lately,” he said. ”Checks are being stolen out of the mail. They like it this way because I’m someone they trust.”

But many of the voters said they don’t know who Lanzilotti is and had no idea he was submitting mail ballot applications in their names.

The Inquirer spoke to 12 of the 39 voters whose applications requested their mail ballots be sent to Lanzilotti. Only two said they knowingly filled out a ballot application with the understanding it would be sent to him instead of their home address.

Five others were unaware their applications had requested their ballots be diverted to Lanzilotti’s P.O. box, at the post office at Broad Street and Castle Avenue.

And five more were adamant they hadn’t applied to vote by mail at all — or at least didn’t know that’s what they were doing when a man showed up at their doorstep to talk to them about the May 17 primary election.

Only one said he’d actually received the ballot Lanzilotti applied for in her name.

Rose Centeno, 59, at first insisted she would never vote by mail, echoing false Republican claims about mail ballots. But when told an application had been submitted last week and a ballot mailed out in her name, Centeno said she wasn’t surprised.

“That’s what they do,” she said. “That’s why you can’t trust the mail ballots. This whole city’s screwed up.”

She later recalled that she had filled out some paperwork with the assistance of a man who showed up at her door and offered to help her change her voter registration from Democrat to Republican.

Maria Morris, 55, also remembered agreeing to switch her party registration during an unannounced visit from a man at her doorstep. She signed some papers, she said, not really paying attention to what they were.

“He didn’t mention anything about ballots,” she said.

And Joseph Tralie III, 63, insisted he hadn’t filled out any paperwork at all.

He doesn’t vote, he said, and had no plans to do so this month. He learned that a ballot in his name had been sent to Lanzilotti’s address when he was contacted Thursday evening by the City Commissioners Office.

“I have my address on my voter registration,” he said. “If someone’s asking for my ballot to be sent to a random P.O. Box, I’m not sure how that can count.”

Republicans up and down the ballot have spent two years attacking mail voting, led by Trump’s lies about fraud and the 2020 election being stolen.

The top Republican candidates for governor are campaigning on repealing Act 77, the 2019 law that allows any voter to cast a ballot by mail. The reality is voter fraud in any form is vanishingly rare, and the handful of confirmed instances in 2020 involved Republicans seeking to cast votes for Trump. Even in Lanzilotti’s case, which lawyers from both parties described as concerning, there’s no evidence of fraudulent votes being cast.

It’s unclear whether Lanzilotti’s behavior crosses legal lines, the lawyers said. Much of it depends on details that aren’t yet known.

“There’s some things you’re describing that I think have arguments that could be made that they’re appropriate, there’s some arguments that can be made that they’re inappropriate,” said Matt Haverstick, an elections lawyer in Montgomery County who works with Republican campaigns. “But the whole zeitgeist of what you’re telling me smacks of unlawful conduct.”

It’s legal for voters to have ballots sent to an address other than their homes — that’s what absentee ballots were intended for in the first place.

“If the circumstance is, it’s mail delivered at a retirement home, and some kindly ward person gets them from the mailroom and hands them out, that’s one thing,” Haverstick said. “Going to a P.O. box at the address for a PAC? I have to think about that one. It’s certainly one that would give me pause under the election code.”

The voters don’t have access to the P.O. box to retrieve their ballots. A few said this week they hadn’t yet received ballots, which Lanzilotti said was because he’s been busy and hasn’t yet delivered them.

“I can only do this in my spare time,” he said. “I have a full-time job.”

It’s also unclear whether delivering ballots to voters is allowed: State election law isn’t explicit on the question, and Act 77 hasn’t been tested on it.

Other legal questions are clearer.

Voters are supposed to fill out their own mail ballot applications, unless they’re ill or did not sign an authorization for a specific person to help them.

None of the 39 requests noted any help in filling out the form. The two sources who reviewed them said many of the applications featured two different sets of handwriting, in line with Lanzilotti’s explanation that he handed voters pre-filled forms.

Ballots are also to be returned only by the voters themselves, with the sole exception for disabled voters who must explicitly authorize a person to help.

Democrats have argued that third-party ballot delivery should be allowed in Pennsylvania, as it is in some other states, because it provides greater access for voters, especially those who need assistance for reasons other than disability. But current law doesn’t allow it, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed in 2020.

Republicans have focused on reports of voters returning multiple ballots — Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, voted by mail and his wife returned his ballot along with her own — to criticize the mail voting system.

Emphasizing that “ballot harvesting,” as they call it, is illegal under state law, state Senate Republicans last month passed legislation that would ban drop boxes, calling it a necessary step to ensure voters are the only ones who return their own ballots.

Lehigh County’s district attorney sparked controversy this week when he said he would send detectives to monitor drop boxes to ensure voters only return their own ballots. Leigh Chapman, who as acting Pennsylvania secretary of state is the highest-ranking elections official, asked him Thursday to reconsider, warning that it could amount to voter intimidation.

Lanzilotti said he’s not returning anyone’s completed ballots.

But Leonard Armstrong, 71, said Lanzilotti offered to do exactly that.

Armstrong said he’s known and trusted Lanzilotti for years as a “kid from the neighborhood.” So when Lanzilotti brought him his ballot last week, Armstrong filled it out that same afternoon, he said, and handed it back in the sealed envelope. He said Lanzilotti had offered to deliver the ballot on his behalf.

“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t trust him,” Armstrong said.

Lanzilotti insisted Armstrong was mistaken, telling The Inquirer that all he had done was drop off the ballot at Armstrong’s home.

As for the other voters who accused him of submitting ballot applications without their knowledge, Lanzilotti said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“The voters signed those forms saying they wanted their ballot sent [to me,]” he added. “They’re the ones that signed it.”

By Thursday evening, word of the unusual number of ballots being sent to Lanzilotti had begun to spread through the 26th Ward.

“Everybody’s talking about it. Nobody any of us knows has a P.O. Box,” Rose DeSantis said. “This sounds like some fraud or crook stuff.
First of all: Dead giveaway to bias "Republicans up and down the ballot have spent two years attacking mail voting, led by Trump’s lies about fraud and the 2020 election being stolen." These are the 'jounalist's' words. No legitimate journalist would write these words in any news piece. WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY TO DETERMINE WHO IS LYING AND WHO IS NOT?

I agree that what this guy is trying to do is fraud. ANOTHER IN A LONG LIST OF REASONS TO DO AWAY WITH UNRESTRICTED AND UNIVERSAL MAIL IN VOTING.

And don't even try to tell me that there's no evidence that dems did not do the same kind of thing. There's plenty of evidence. I gave you a major, tangible piece of evidence. (Censoring legitimate and ultimately true news about Hunter Biden's laptop). Tomorrow, watch 2000 Mules for more. And don't try and tell me the courts disproved it. They threw out all the cases on technical reasons, and none of them even looked at the evidence.
Your friendly neighborhood racist. On the waiting list to be a nazi. Designated an honorary 'snowflake'. Trolled by the very best, as well as by BJ. Always typical, unlike others.., Fulminator, Hopelessly in the tank for trump... inappropriate... Flocking himself... Probably a tucking sexist, too... All thought comes from the right wing noise machine(TM)... A clear and present threat to The Future Of Our Democracy.. Doesn't understand anything... Made the trump apologist and enabler playoffs... Heathen bastard... Knows nothing about history... Liar.... don't know much about statistics and polling... Nothing at all about biology... Ignorant Bigot... Potential Future Pariah... Big Nerd... Spiraling, Anti-Trans Bigot.. A Lunatic AND a Bigot.. Very Ignorant of the World in General... Sounds deranged... Fake Christian... Weird... has the mind of a child... has paranoid delusions... Simpleton

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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#27 Post by silverscreenselect » Fri May 06, 2022 9:47 pm

For last November's municipal elections, we received our ballots on the day before the final day of early voting. We were able to fill out the ballots and leave them in the drop box. Otherwise, we would have had to chance the mails arriving in time or go on election day and cast provisional ballots. This time, however, we got the ballots before early voting started, so we'll fill them out this weekend and drop them off.

I did get some unexpected good news when I received the ballots. For the last ten years, we've been in the Sixth District and had Lucy McBath as our Congresswoman since 2016. However, in redistricting, they moved the DeKalb County part of the Sixth District , which is heavily Democratic, into the neighboring Seventh District, and added the more rural and heavily Republican Dawson and Forsyth Counties into the Sixth District. That means that the Sixth is very likely to elect a Republican this year. (Lucy McBath is running against fellow Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux in the Seventh.)

I had thought that we were still in the Sixth District, but when I got our ballots, I was pleased to learn that we have been moved to the Fifth District (where we were before 2010). This is John Lewis's old district and Nikema Williams is the current Representative. So I will still have representation in Washington as will all the people with David Perdue yard signs in the nearby ritzy Sandy Springs subdivisions who will have moved into the Fifth as well.
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#28 Post by silverscreenselect » Fri May 06, 2022 10:12 pm

flockofseagulls104 wrote:
Fri May 06, 2022 9:23 pm
And don't even try to tell me that there's no evidence that dems did not do the same kind of thing. There's plenty of evidence. I gave you a major, tangible piece of evidence. (Censoring legitimate and ultimately true news about Hunter Biden's laptop). Tomorrow, watch 2000 Mules for more. And don't try and tell me the courts disproved it. They threw out all the cases on technical reasons, and none of them even looked at the evidence.
Whatever may or may not have been on Hunter Biden's laptop has absolutely nothing to do with whether there was any evidence of widespread election fraud in the 2020 elections.

The fact is that Trump loyalists brought 60 lawsuits in state and federal courts and lost all of them. Some were dismissed for what Flock labels as technical reasons. These "technical" reasons included failure to allege specific fraudulent acts or to introduce evidence to support the allegations. (It's elementary fraud law in many jurisdictions that fraud must be alleged with specificity.) Other cases were voluntarily dismissed by the Plaintiffs (very possibly because they or their attorneys realized they would have to introduce sworn evidence to support their allegations). Here's what Reuters had to say about Flock's claim:
As reported by Reuters here , state and federal judges - some appointed by Trump - dismissed more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump or his allies alleging election fraud and other irregularities. Independent experts, governors and state election officials from both parties say there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

According to the Washington Post here , instead of alleging “widespread fraud or election-changing conspiracy” the lawsuits pushed by Trump’s team and allies focused on smaller complaints, which were largely dismissed by judges due to a lack of evidence. “The Republicans did not provide evidence to back up their assertions — just speculation, rumors or hearsay.”

On Nov 27, 2020 a federal appeals court rejected a Trump campaign proposal to block Biden from being declared the winner of Pennsylvania. ( here ). At the time, Stephanos Bibas, on behalf of the three-judge panel wrote: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so." It added: “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here."
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact ... SKBN2AF1G1

Here are a couple of other reports on the lawsuits that come to the same conclusions:

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-c ... ts-2020-11
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2 ... suits-whe/

Flock's problem here is that the results of lawsuits are contained in written opinions by the judges which are easily fact checked. And have been fact checked. And Trump and the Republicans lost EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when Flock first brought up this latest round of election fraud "proof" nonsense, the Georgia Elections Board has issued subpoenas to those actively promoting these fraud claims in regard to the Georgia election. So it's time for them to put up or shut up. Or, more likely, fail to show up and then continue to wail and moan about widespread fraud.
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#29 Post by Bob Juch » Fri May 13, 2022 8:38 am

Elon Musk said his $44 billion deal to take over Twitter was “on hold” until he gathered more details about spam and fake accounts on the site.
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#30 Post by silverscreenselect » Fri May 13, 2022 11:06 am

jarnon wrote:
Fri May 06, 2022 7:19 pm
Philadelphia Inquirer wrote:A mail ballot mystery is unfolding at an otherwise unremarkable post office box in South Philadelphia.

City elections officials last week received applications from more than three dozen Republican voters across a pocket of the neighborhood. Those applications requested that mail ballots be delivered not to the voters’ homes, but to P.O. Box 54705, an address registered to a recently formed GOP political action committee, according to state data.

Many of those voters told The Inquirer they have no idea why their ballots were sent there. Some said they never even applied to vote by mail.
GOP staffers fired after possible ‘ballot harvesting’ operation found in Pa.
The fallout from the discovery of a potential GOP “ballot harvesting” operation in South Philadelphia continued Tuesday, as two state party staffers lost their jobs, the matter became fodder for attacks in the Republican primary for governor, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle jockeyed to define just what the situation said — or didn’t — about the security of voting by mail.

Republican Party officials fired Shamus O’Donnell, 27, and C.J. Parker, 24, both of whom had been affiliated with the Republican Registration Coalition, the political action committee behind the South Philadelphia mail ballot operation, according to four party sources familiar with the matter. Prior to his termination, O’Donnell, the PAC’s former treasurer and a Republican ward leader in Northeast Philadelphia, had worked as a field organizer for the state party, most recently on the campaign of state Senate candidate Sam Oropeza. Parker, also a GOP ward leader in the Northeast, had worked as a personal aide to state party Chair Lawrence Tabas.

O’Donnell and Parker declined to comment Tuesday, and party officials, including Tabas, did not respond to requests for comment. But the sources who described the terminations — and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter — said the party’s decision to cut ties with the two men stemmed from an Inquirer story last week that raised questions about the PAC’s work registering people in South Philadelphia to vote by mail.
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#31 Post by flockofseagulls104 » Fri May 13, 2022 3:15 pm

First step in Netflix getting out of the woke business?

https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/n ... 235264904/
Your friendly neighborhood racist. On the waiting list to be a nazi. Designated an honorary 'snowflake'. Trolled by the very best, as well as by BJ. Always typical, unlike others.., Fulminator, Hopelessly in the tank for trump... inappropriate... Flocking himself... Probably a tucking sexist, too... All thought comes from the right wing noise machine(TM)... A clear and present threat to The Future Of Our Democracy.. Doesn't understand anything... Made the trump apologist and enabler playoffs... Heathen bastard... Knows nothing about history... Liar.... don't know much about statistics and polling... Nothing at all about biology... Ignorant Bigot... Potential Future Pariah... Big Nerd... Spiraling, Anti-Trans Bigot.. A Lunatic AND a Bigot.. Very Ignorant of the World in General... Sounds deranged... Fake Christian... Weird... has the mind of a child... has paranoid delusions... Simpleton

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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#32 Post by silverscreenselect » Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:07 am

flockofseagulls104 wrote:
Tue Apr 05, 2022 8:16 pm
On one side: I canceled my DirectTv subscription. They dumped OAN, caving to the organized leftist campaign and choosing their side. They have decided they are woke. I have many other options that aren't.
Flock may be running out of options. From Yahoo, quoting an article in the pay walled New York Times:
The future of One America News, which established itself as a powerful voice in conservative media by promoting some of the most outlandish falsehoods about the 2020 election, is in serious doubt as major carriers drop it from their lineups and defamation lawsuits threaten to drain its finances.

By the end of this week, the cable network will have lost its presence in some 20 million homes this year. The most recent blow came from Verizon, which will stop carrying OAN on its Fios television service starting Saturday. That will starve the network of a major stream of revenue: the fees it collects from Verizon, which counts roughly 3.5 million cable subscribers. In April, OAN was dropped by AT&T’s DirecTV, which has about 15 million subscribers.

OAN’s remaining audience will be small. The network will soon be available only to a few hundred thousand people who subscribe to smaller cable providers, such as Frontier and GCI Liberty, said Scott Robson, a senior research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. OAN also sells its programming directly to users through its OAN Live and KlowdTV streaming platforms, but those products most likely provide a fraction of the revenue generated by traditional TV providers.“I really think this is the death blow for the network,” Robson said.

In its statement announcing the termination of its OAN deal, Verizon said only that it had been “unable to reach an agreement to continue carrying One America News” and made no mention of the public pressure campaigns it faced from activist groups like Media Matters, which had been calling on cable providers to drop the network. A company spokesperson declined to comment further Tuesday. DirecTV also did not elaborate on its reasons for dropping OAN, saying in January that the move was part of a “routine internal review.” On Tuesday, the company referred to the January statement.

While OAN does not have the influence wielded by the much larger Fox News, the top-rated cable news network, the fees from its deals with Verizon and AT&T provided a substantial stream of income — about $36 million a year, by some estimates. And once it is gone from millions of television sets, OAN will be in a weaker bargaining position with advertisers; fewer potential viewers most likely mean fewer companies willing to pay as much to promote their products on the network.

Now OAN is trying to shore up its viewership. In recent days, an advertisement on its website offered new subscribers free access to its OAN Live service through Oct. 31. Its anchors have cast their network’s dispute with Verizon as another attempt by a corporate media establishment to silence conservative voices.One anchor, Dan Ball, recently implored viewers to call Verizon and demand that it continue service of OAN. “Call that number. You want to tell them, ‘Keep OAN. Keep OAN,’” he said. “Verizon is the next one trying to censor One America News.”

All this comes at a particularly bad time for OAN, which is based in San Diego. The company and the Herring family that backs it face defamation lawsuits over the network’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. That coverage featured wild stories about supposed plots to steal votes from Trump. Voting technology companies Smartmatic and Dominion are suing OAN over false claims that their machines enabled Trump’s enemies to switch votes cast for him to President Joe Biden. One employee of Dominion, Eric Coomer, is also suing the network. Coomer received death threats after OAN named him in a report as an alleged collaborator of antifa, the far-left movement. Two election workers from Georgia sued OAN for reporting that they were part of an illegal plot to add fraudulent votes to Biden’s totals in the state, which he narrowly won. OAN settled that case in April.

The cases are among a series of defamation suits against conservative media outlets and Trump allies that are pending before judges across the country. Dominion and Smartmatic are also suing Newsmax, one of OAN’s competitors, and Fox News. For OAN, the litigation has so far not gone well, as judges have rejected its attempts to have the cases dismissed. In one ruling, a judge concluded that OAN had acted “maliciously and consciously” in perpetuating falsehoods about Dominion and that its chief White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, had failed to exercise even the most minimal journalistic scrutiny. In her report, Rion cited a conservative podcaster and activist, Joe Oltmann, who claimed to have eavesdropped on an antifa conference call before the election, and reported that “antifa-drenched engineers are hellbent on deleting half of America’s voice” and referred to Coomer.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/oan-dependab ... 56117.html

Pretty soon, Flock is going to be left with only his most reliable news source, the Gateway Pundit.
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#33 Post by jarnon » Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:03 am

jarnon wrote:
Fri May 06, 2022 7:19 pm
Philadelphia Inquirer wrote:A mail ballot mystery is unfolding at an otherwise unremarkable post office box in South Philadelphia.

City elections officials last week received applications from more than three dozen Republican voters across a pocket of the neighborhood. Those applications requested that mail ballots be delivered not to the voters’ homes, but to P.O. Box 54705, an address registered to a recently formed GOP political action committee, according to state data.

Many of those voters told The Inquirer they have no idea why their ballots were sent there. Some said they never even applied to vote by mail.

And yet one out of every six Republican ballot requests in the 26th Ward — the section of deep South Philly south of Passyunk Avenue and west of Broad Street that voted twice for Donald Trump — listed the post office box. That made it the largest single destination for ballots in the city other than nursing homes or elections offices.

“This doesn’t even make any sense,” said Rose DeSantis, 35, who was surprised when told by a reporter that a ballot she says she never requested had been sent to the P.O. box this week. “You would think that would raise some red flags.”

At a time when Republican lawmakers and candidates have attacked mail voting and falsely portrayed it as rife with abuse, the ballot requests and interviews with voters reveal an effort by one GOP operative to use mail ballots that may violate or at least push the boundaries of state law.

For example, the mailing address portion of the form — where the P.O. box was written — is in a visibly different handwriting from the rest of the form on many of the applications, according to two sources who have reviewed the documents. And that handwriting appears on multiple forms, suggesting that the same person wrote in the P.O. box for the voters.

The Philadelphia City Commissioners Office, which oversees elections, said it was aware of the situation and had been “actively monitoring” the issue.

”After we were presented with the additional information by The Philadelphia Inquirer … we began the process of contacting [voters] to determine if they desired a replacement ballot to be sent to an address where they can directly receive it,” said Nick Custodio, deputy to Lisa Deeley, the chair of the city commissioners.

Some ballots had already been sent out to the P.O. box; those will be set aside for the commissioners to review when they’re returned, Custodio said.

The District Attorney’s Office is also aware of the issue and “that there are inconsistencies with the handwriting” on the applications, spokesperson Jane Roh said.

The ballots appear to be the effort of one man: Billy Lanzilotti, a 23-year-old GOP operative, South Philadelphia ward leader, and chairman of the Republican Registration Coalition, the PAC he registered at the P.O. box earlier this year.

In an interview, he said everything about the situation was legal and appropriate.

“I didn’t do anything that to my understanding was against the law,” he said.

Lanzilotti, who already runs a nearby ward, also wants to become the Republican leader for the 26th Ward. Aiming “to help pump out the Republican voter turnout,” he said, he began going door-to-door earlier this month and signing up residents of the 26th to vote by mail.

He’d hand them a form on which he or people he works with had already filled out the voter’s name and his P.O. box as the destination, he said. Having the ballots sent there was a “convenience to the voter,” he said, so it could be hand-delivered to them later by someone they trusted.

“There’s been a number of problems with the post office lately,” he said. ”Checks are being stolen out of the mail. They like it this way because I’m someone they trust.”

But many of the voters said they don’t know who Lanzilotti is and had no idea he was submitting mail ballot applications in their names.

The Inquirer spoke to 12 of the 39 voters whose applications requested their mail ballots be sent to Lanzilotti. Only two said they knowingly filled out a ballot application with the understanding it would be sent to him instead of their home address.

Five others were unaware their applications had requested their ballots be diverted to Lanzilotti’s P.O. box, at the post office at Broad Street and Castle Avenue.

And five more were adamant they hadn’t applied to vote by mail at all — or at least didn’t know that’s what they were doing when a man showed up at their doorstep to talk to them about the May 17 primary election.

Only one said he’d actually received the ballot Lanzilotti applied for in her name.

Rose Centeno, 59, at first insisted she would never vote by mail, echoing false Republican claims about mail ballots. But when told an application had been submitted last week and a ballot mailed out in her name, Centeno said she wasn’t surprised.

“That’s what they do,” she said. “That’s why you can’t trust the mail ballots. This whole city’s screwed up.”

She later recalled that she had filled out some paperwork with the assistance of a man who showed up at her door and offered to help her change her voter registration from Democrat to Republican.

Maria Morris, 55, also remembered agreeing to switch her party registration during an unannounced visit from a man at her doorstep. She signed some papers, she said, not really paying attention to what they were.

“He didn’t mention anything about ballots,” she said.

And Joseph Tralie III, 63, insisted he hadn’t filled out any paperwork at all.

He doesn’t vote, he said, and had no plans to do so this month. He learned that a ballot in his name had been sent to Lanzilotti’s address when he was contacted Thursday evening by the City Commissioners Office.

“I have my address on my voter registration,” he said. “If someone’s asking for my ballot to be sent to a random P.O. Box, I’m not sure how that can count.”

Republicans up and down the ballot have spent two years attacking mail voting, led by Trump’s lies about fraud and the 2020 election being stolen.

The top Republican candidates for governor are campaigning on repealing Act 77, the 2019 law that allows any voter to cast a ballot by mail. The reality is voter fraud in any form is vanishingly rare, and the handful of confirmed instances in 2020 involved Republicans seeking to cast votes for Trump. Even in Lanzilotti’s case, which lawyers from both parties described as concerning, there’s no evidence of fraudulent votes being cast.

It’s unclear whether Lanzilotti’s behavior crosses legal lines, the lawyers said. Much of it depends on details that aren’t yet known.

“There’s some things you’re describing that I think have arguments that could be made that they’re appropriate, there’s some arguments that can be made that they’re inappropriate,” said Matt Haverstick, an elections lawyer in Montgomery County who works with Republican campaigns. “But the whole zeitgeist of what you’re telling me smacks of unlawful conduct.”

It’s legal for voters to have ballots sent to an address other than their homes — that’s what absentee ballots were intended for in the first place.

“If the circumstance is, it’s mail delivered at a retirement home, and some kindly ward person gets them from the mailroom and hands them out, that’s one thing,” Haverstick said. “Going to a P.O. box at the address for a PAC? I have to think about that one. It’s certainly one that would give me pause under the election code.”

The voters don’t have access to the P.O. box to retrieve their ballots. A few said this week they hadn’t yet received ballots, which Lanzilotti said was because he’s been busy and hasn’t yet delivered them.

“I can only do this in my spare time,” he said. “I have a full-time job.”

It’s also unclear whether delivering ballots to voters is allowed: State election law isn’t explicit on the question, and Act 77 hasn’t been tested on it.

Other legal questions are clearer.

Voters are supposed to fill out their own mail ballot applications, unless they’re ill or did not sign an authorization for a specific person to help them.

None of the 39 requests noted any help in filling out the form. The two sources who reviewed them said many of the applications featured two different sets of handwriting, in line with Lanzilotti’s explanation that he handed voters pre-filled forms.

Ballots are also to be returned only by the voters themselves, with the sole exception for disabled voters who must explicitly authorize a person to help.

Democrats have argued that third-party ballot delivery should be allowed in Pennsylvania, as it is in some other states, because it provides greater access for voters, especially those who need assistance for reasons other than disability. But current law doesn’t allow it, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed in 2020.

Republicans have focused on reports of voters returning multiple ballots — Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, voted by mail and his wife returned his ballot along with her own — to criticize the mail voting system.

Emphasizing that “ballot harvesting,” as they call it, is illegal under state law, state Senate Republicans last month passed legislation that would ban drop boxes, calling it a necessary step to ensure voters are the only ones who return their own ballots.

Lehigh County’s district attorney sparked controversy this week when he said he would send detectives to monitor drop boxes to ensure voters only return their own ballots. Leigh Chapman, who as acting Pennsylvania secretary of state is the highest-ranking elections official, asked him Thursday to reconsider, warning that it could amount to voter intimidation.

Lanzilotti said he’s not returning anyone’s completed ballots.

But Leonard Armstrong, 71, said Lanzilotti offered to do exactly that.

Armstrong said he’s known and trusted Lanzilotti for years as a “kid from the neighborhood.” So when Lanzilotti brought him his ballot last week, Armstrong filled it out that same afternoon, he said, and handed it back in the sealed envelope. He said Lanzilotti had offered to deliver the ballot on his behalf.

“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t trust him,” Armstrong said.

Lanzilotti insisted Armstrong was mistaken, telling The Inquirer that all he had done was drop off the ballot at Armstrong’s home.

As for the other voters who accused him of submitting ballot applications without their knowledge, Lanzilotti said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“The voters signed those forms saying they wanted their ballot sent [to me,]” he added. “They’re the ones that signed it.”

By Thursday evening, word of the unusual number of ballots being sent to Lanzilotti had begun to spread through the 26th Ward.

“Everybody’s talking about it. Nobody any of us knows has a P.O. Box,” Rose DeSantis said. “This sounds like some fraud or crook stuff.
Lanzilotti, who lost his leadership position because of this incident, found a new, more legal way to help the GOP: circulating petitions to get Green Party candidates on the ballot. He hopes some potential Democratic voters will vote for the Green Party instead.
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#34 Post by silverscreenselect » Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:23 am

jarnon wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:03 am
Lanzilotti, who lost his leadership position because of this incident, found a new, more legal way to help the GOP: circulating petitions to get Green Party candidates on the ballot. He hopes some potential Democratic voters will vote for the Green Party instead.
In fairness, the Democrats did something similar during primaries in swing states, including Pennsylvania. They donated money to the campaigns of more extreme Republican candidates, including gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who they felt would be easier to beat in the general election.
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Re: Some Hope and Some Crap

#35 Post by jarnon » Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:38 am

silverscreenselect wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:23 am
jarnon wrote:
Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:03 am
Lanzilotti, who lost his leadership position because of this incident, found a new, more legal way to help the GOP: circulating petitions to get Green Party candidates on the ballot. He hopes some potential Democratic voters will vote for the Green Party instead.
In fairness, the Democrats did something similar during primaries in swing states, including Pennsylvania. They donated money to the campaigns of more extreme Republican candidates, including gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who they felt would be easier to beat in the general election.
In other states, Democrats voted for far-right candidates in Republican primaries, but they can't do that here.

If Lanzilotti was still a ward leader, party rules would prohibit him for campaigning for non-GOP candidates. As a rank-and-file Republican, he can do what he wants as long as it's legal.
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