A judge today signed a subpoena order for Alla Pometko, a former consultant to the campaign of Republican David Storobin (who remained up by three votes over Democrat Lew Fidler at last count).  The Fidler campaign has accused Team Storobin, through the work of Pometko, of perpetrating a potentially game-changing election fraud scheme by submitting sketchy absentee ballot applications. . . 

Judge Larry Martin also dismissed the Storobin campaign’s request for summary judgment and “ordered Fidler’s attorneys to submit a ‘bill of particulars’ which would, in theory, contain supporting evidence to support their fraud claim. We have no idea what that bill of particulars will contain because they haven’t given us any clue in court,” Simpson said.

The bitter contest and recount has already dredged-up evidence of electoral practices that sparked the Electoral Commission investigation and may lead to charges of criminal wrongdoing. It laid bare a practice of “vaciado de listas,” where people were recorded as having voted that never went to the polls or were deceased.

“The political parties themselves [NPP and PDP] have made sure throughout the years that this practice remained hidden,” Antonio Sagardia, ex Minister of Justice under Fortuño, said. “Now they have kicked the anthill and the ants are starting to bite.”

Voter confidence has taken a nosedive on an island already highly suspect of the political system and players. In a recent poll in El Nuevo Día, the newspaper of record of Puerto Rico, 82 percent of respondents said they thought that the discrepancies and other irregularities were delinquent acts by both parties.

More on the recount here.

The Department of Justice blocked the implementation of Texas’ voter ID law just days after seven individuals were indicted by grand jury for illegally voting in Texas. The DOJ has combatted the voter ID laws of many states’ by attempting to discredit the presence of fraud and raising claims of disenfranchisement. However, vote fraud is a real and prevalent problem (See RNLA’s Vote Fraud Map here), and states’ already enforcing voter ID laws have shown no indication of voter suppression or disenfranchisement. (See RNLA’s previous post on this here.) The DOJ ignores vote fraud, even when someone pretended to be Attorney General Eric Holder and was given his voting ballot (DC has no voter ID law).

Two Republican chairmen say they’ve finished drawing redistricting plans for the Mississippi Legislature, and experts are privately reviewing the proposed maps. 

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves released a statement: “The maps have been sent to legal counsel to ensure the plans meet all the requirements of the Voting Rights Act and will withstand judicial scrutiny. The maps will be released within the next few weeks.” 

The current legislative session is scheduled to end May 6. . .

“The actions of the Department of Justice are wholly unjustified. The foot-dragging, the shoddy statistical analysis and the decision to ignore U.S. Supreme Court precedent reveal either a beleaguered Justice Department incapable of maintaining a professional level of operation or a rogue agency willfully placing its weight on one side of the scale of justice.”

“Attorney General Eric Holder is supposed to be the chief law enforcement officer, not the chief partisan officer. Latinos, Blacks, and Whites all suffer when ghost voters and other election irregularities determine election outcomes. Instead of undermining voter confidence, the Justice Department should be working to encourage it,” concluded Cooper.

Last week the NCPPR announced the formation of a ‘Voter Identification Task Force’ “to continue the excellent work of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in promoting measures to enhance integrity in voting.”

The Department of Defense declared victory and reported a large increase in military voting efforts following their Federal Voting Assistance Program’s 2010 survey of the military. However, as the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky properly identified, the DOD cooked the books to hide its failure to protect military voters. The FVAP announced a 21% increase in military voting from 2006 to 2010. However, the FVAP combined active duty members with reservists (for the first time) in their biased analysis, significantly overrepresented older members of the military, and was criticized by the U.S. Government Accountability Office for the survey’s low response rates. Additionally, the FVAP’s report revealed that 29% (approximately 120,000 members) of the active duty military did not receive their absentee ballot in 2010.