Philly Leader

The sentencing this week of former Philadelphia congressman Ozzie Myers for election fraud undermines assertions on the left and in the mainstream media that “old-fashioned ballot box stuffing no longer occurs,” says Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation.

This week a federal judge sentenced Myers, 79, to 30 months in prison after he pleaded guilty in June to stuffing ballot boxes for the Democrats in the 2014-18 Pennsylvania elections. Myers previously served time in federal prison for his role in the late 1970s Abscam scandal.  

“Ozzie Myers and his sentencing to federal prison, along with the prior guilty pleas of the Philadelphia polling place managers that Myers bribed to stuff fraudulent ballots into ballot boxes in their precincts for multiple candidates in multiple elections, shows that election fraud still occurs and election officials and law enforcement need to be vigorous in detecting, investigating and prosecuting such cases,” von Spakovsky told the Philly Leader.

“Nothing less that the sanctity of our democratic process is at stake,” he added.

Heritage maintains an Election Fraud Database where it lists 1,375 proven instances of fraud and 1,182 criminal convictions of fraud from around the country since the 1980s.

A separate election fraud compilation just released by a Georgia voter integrity group, VoterGA, lists occurrences of fraud in Georgia and four other states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.

“VoterGA assembled from battleground states detailed, referenced evidence of fraud and illegalities that changed the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election because it is obvious that the world needs to know the truth,” VoterGA president Garland Favorito told the Philly Leader. “We, the people, must overhaul the American election system and remove its components from the hands of criminals to make sure such a corrupt scheme of bribery and deceit never happens again.”

Included in the group’s assessment of fraud was the private funding of the 2020 elections by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg through two nonprofit groups, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation Research (CEIR). The VoterGA report calls the funding a “bribery scheme.”

The funds – totaling nearly $400 million from Zuckerberg – were granted to local and state elections officials under the guise of promoting safe election practices during the pandemic. But an investigation by the Capital Research Center (CRC) showed that the largest portion of the money was funneled into Democratic areas as a get-out-the-vote campaign.

Just this week CRC reported that the nonprofit Center for Renewing America filed a complaint with the IRS asking it to investigate CTCL, CEIR and a third nonprofit, the National Vote at Home Institute, over their roles in the 2020 elections. And the group is asking the IRS to investigate income tax deductions that Zuckerberg made on the money he donated to CTCL and CEIR. 

Since the 2020 elections, many states and some counties have banned or restricted election officials from accepting private funds. CRC maintains an updated list of those bans and restrictions.