Seems two of the infamous Three Amigos may be skirting illegality in their attempts to win today's primary. I already reported emails coming in reporting Pedro Espada and his supporters possibly violating election laws...now I am getting a press release about Ruben Diaz, Sr. doing the same kind of crap. Here is the letter to the Board of Elections reporting irregularities possibly on the part of the Diaz campaign:

September 14, 2010

Dear Board of Election,

We write in an effort to give you advance notice of what has been a consistent and serious problem we have witnessed with widespread irregularities at polling stations throughout the 32nd New York State Senate District. We believe these irregularities specifically disenfranchise voters and the campaign of Carlos "Charlie" Ramos.

In specific, a team of legal observers visited well over half a dozen polling sites from the period of 10am to 3pm. The team spent approximately 20 to 35 minutes at each site observing and reviewing the polling practices. At every site without exception, there were serious breaches of procedure including but not limited to the following:

- Widespread reports of poll workers attempting to influence voter choices

- Interpreters having discussions with voters, following them into the confidential voter booth and offering suggestions on who to vote for

- Voters completing ballots in public spaces without confidentiality and or with people hovering over them

- Certified poll watchers for Carlos "Charlie" Ramos being thrown out of polling sites without cause

- Campaign literature of Ruben Diaz, Sr. being brought into polling sites

- Signs not properly posted 100 feet from polling sites

- Widespread failure of scanning machines with no clear or articulated protocol to ensure chain of custody of emergency ballots

We are purposefully putting you on notice of this as soon as possible and many hours before what will be the highest expected volume of voter turn-out and well in advance of the impending issue with counting and safekeeping emergency ballots. In addition, we also notified you on September 9th of our concerns when we copied George Gonzalez, the Executive Director of the Board of Elections in our letter to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting election observers for today's election. Please see attached a copy of that letter.

Under relevant parts of the New York State Election Law, New York State Constitution and other relevant statute code and law, we respectfully request that you immediately rectify this situation to protect against voter disenfranchisement during the high volume period and ballot safekeeping.

If you are unable to do so, you are hereby on notice, we retain all right to seek legal intervention to rectify what we believe could rise to the level of voter fraud.

In closing, while we recognize that such issues and concerns may have been exacerbated by new voting protocol as has been consistently reported throughout the media today, we are deeply concerned that voters and the campaign of Carlos "Charlie" Ramos may have been specifically targeted to unfairly influence the outcome of the election. We hope the Board will act immediately to prevent this!

Sincerely,
Natasha Dillon
Campaign Manager

I saw the complete fiasco that was the new voting machines...basically they weren't working at all this morning in my area (the 52nd AD). But it seems like both Espada and Diaz supporters have been resorting to thuggish, anti-democratic practices to win. I hope these allegations are properly investigated.