As the Clinton County Board of Elections begins counting absentee ballots, Plattsburgh police are investigating alleged absentee ballot fraud by the Working Families Party: Republican candidates are charging that possibly hundreds of absentee ballots may have been improperly cast in the Nov. 5 election. They claim that members of the Working Families Party may have contributed to voters falsely filling out applications for absentee ballots. Many of the ballot applications were marked that the voter would be out of town on Election Day, but, in several instances, that was not the case, according to some of the people who filled out the applications. Republicans also believe that, in some cases, voters just signed the actual absentee ballot and other people marked the votes for them. Earlier this year, four Democrats were sentenced for their roles in a 2009 voter fraud scandal involving forged absentee ballots in the Working Families Party primary.