Call in the Justice Department to referee Worcester’s Nov. Election
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” Those elegant words were written, by John Adams, Founding Father, and the second President of these United States. Unfortunately, over the last two election cycles, serious questions have arisen about the freeness, fairness and impartiality of elections in the City of Worcester. It may be time for drastic measures to right that ship.
As a result of the activities in 2010 in Worcester the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth, William Galvin, reminded elections officials that they need to make inactive any voter that did not fill out their municipalities census form. In Worcester this had resulted in close to 50% of voters being deemed inactive. If you are inactive, you must show some form of identification in order to vote.
Fast Forward
Fast forward to this year’s state primary election, held on September 6, 2012. Countercharges, of voter fraud and “voter suppression,” were levied by and against Worcester Tea Party observers on that day. Worcester Tea Party members say that they observed people being escorted into the polling precincts, again by Neighbor to Neighbor wearing their purple shirts. In addition, allegations of voters showing resident alien – green cards – as identification were witnessed. The observers tried to document this and were thrown out of the polling location, they would say illegally, for doing so.
City officials, led by Councilor Saral Rivera, stormed into the voting precinct to allege voter intimidation by the neutral observers, to the Democratic primary. Numerous hearings have been held by both the City Council and the Election Commission to determine what happened on that day. As the New York based newspaper up the street’s editorial board has said no credible evidence has been presented showing voter intimidation. So far little evidence has been found that the Election Commission has refused to call for a formal investigation.
"Free, Fair, Virtuous, and Independent Elections"
This brings us to the November 6, 2012 election and what should be done to ensure, as Adams said, that “free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections” take place in the City of Worcester on that day. City officials should ask the Department of Justice to monitor the elections, as independent observers. This has been done before in Worcester County. In the spring of 2011 in South County, the Department of Justice was asked to monitor the special election to settle the tie between Geraldo Alicea and Peter Durant. Their presence resulted in a “free, fair, virtuous, and independent election.” The voters of Worcester, and indeed the rest of the Commonwealth, deserve the same on November 6th.
Rob Eno is a conservative activist and publisher of the Massachusetts based blog, RedMassGroup.com. He's a native of Lowell, and currently resides in Shrewsbury.
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