Ballot tampering in New Jersey? Miss Coleman, demand an investigation!

Proof that you don't necessarily need black box machines to tamper with ballots:

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-0/113152145242680.xml&coll=1

The trouble was, when she flipped the lever to (cast a write-in vote) yesterday morning, the space was already written on, bearing the name of someone else's write-in. Something, she said, was amiss.

Hummel stood her ground for some 45 minutes amid threats that the sheriff would be called. Brian Fisher, a poll challenger, got on the phone with election officials.

Essex County is extremely heavily Democratic. It went for Corzine more than 2-to-1. Who knows how many ballots had names already written in on the write-in lines for any office? It's only because one woman decided to write-in that this was ever discovered.

It may not sound like a lot, but if the race had been as close as the Republicans were predicting, and Forrester demanded a recount, all of those ballots would have been examined. A write-in along with a lever vote would be considered an overvote, and the ballot spoiled. So, into the trash it goes.

Now let's say that, instead of winning Drumthwacket by 200,000 votes, Jon Corzine had only won by 20,000 like some outlying polls had suggested. A few thousand of these "spoiled" ballots in Democratic counties would have really hurt. Couple that with a few black box counties (including newly electronic Cumberland and Salem), and there could have been a true election theft.

It seems to me the only thing that kept the Republicans from stealing this one is that our man won so darn big.

To our State Chair, Bonnie Watson Coleman: BONNIE! WAKE UP! At least THIS Committeman is demanding an investigation! Get ELEC and the FEC into Essex County, and all the other counties too, for that matter, and find out what happened! Democracy demands nothing less!

...and it's usually in a direction opposite to what they believe will be checked, watched, and examined. That's an important discovery that must be looked at and investigated. Mark it down as another route of disenfranchisement that must be watched.

...and to my County Chair, Lou Magazzu. We need to seize on this development, before it becomes nothing more than a three-paragraph kicker in the Star Ledger. There are dangerous implications in this.

Any of the BBV-activists here? Check in, and check into this!