Anthony Gemma isn’t wrong
when he says voter fraud has occurred over the years in Rhode Island. In fact,
some of the evidence he points to was actually perpetrated by people now acting
as surrogates to his campaign.
First
there is Maryelyn Alba-Acevedo. Following Gemma’s infamous press event on
Wednesday, she was one of the Providence residents who came forward to
corroborate his accusations.
She
should know, having committed voter fraud herself, according to a 2008
Providence Journal article. Alba-Acevedo was running for a state Senate seat
against Juan Pichardo that year, and he made a complaint to the Board of
Elections about her absentee ballots.
There’s no link to the
article, and GoLocalProv also referenced the
article on Friday in a piece
similar to this one. Here’s an excerpt from the article (August, 26, 2008
by Daniel Barbarisi) from a copy provided by Alba-Acevedo in an email she sent to
the Rhode Island Latino Political Action Committee email listserv at the time:
One
candidate for state Senate, Maryelyn Alba-Acevedo, turned in more than 100
applications for mail ballots, including more than the allowed 50 witnessed by
one notary. Thirty-six of her applications said the applicants could not vote
for religious reasons, a rarely used exemption.
The
Board of Canvassers turned to the state police for an investigation of
Alba-Acevedo’s ballots, and after receiving a report back from the police,
rejected her ballots Friday.
“We
found that some of those applications are tainted, and that’s why they were not
accepted by us,” Board of Canvassers Chairman and Secretary Laurence K. Flynn
said.
According
to the state police, many of Alba-Acevedo’s mail ballot applications came from
a high rise, where she offered mail ballots to people who may not have known
what they meant.
“The
people who signed it were unsure what they were signing,” said state police
Major Steven G. O’Donnell.
O’Donnell
said that, having given their report to the Providence Board of Canvassers, the
state police consider the matter closed, and Alba-Acevedo will not face any
criminal prosecution.
A video recently leaked to
the Journal indicates
absentee ballots were purchased from high rises on Grand and Vineyard streets.
Ironically, that is where Alba-Acevedo collected absentee ballots that were
nullified by the Board of Elections as a result of the state police
investigation. The video was secretly recorded by Gemma’s investigators. Gemma
told the Journal he is not responsible for the leak.
Also in
the video, the Gemma operative can be heard saying about the absentee ballots,
“Are these Wilbur’s people? Because Wilbur is supposed to help us too.”
Ostensibly,
they are referring to Providence City Councilor Wilbur Jennings.
Jennings,
like Alba-Acevedo stepped forward after Gemma’s Wednesday press conference to
say that he too has knowledge about voter fraud in Providence.
Also
like Alba-Acevedo, he has knowledge of it because he was accused of it in 2008
at the same time she was. In fact, he was implicated in the very same
Providence Journal article. Here’s an excerpt:
[Alba-Acevedo's]
political ally, Wilbur W. Jennings Jr., who is running for state
representative, turned in close to 50 [absentee ballots]. Of those, nearly
three dozen listed the applicants as so disabled that they could not vote:
including Jennings’ three sons and three sisters.
Alba-Acevedo’s
and Jennings’ primary opponents, Rep. Thomas Slater and Sen. Juan Pichardo,
both incumbents, say the disabilities and the religious exemptions are fake.
They have hired a lawyer and are challenging the legitimacy of Alba-Acevedo’s
and Jennings’ mail ballots.
Jennings,
64, the former director of Providence’s Department of Public Works and a
seven-time candidate for state and city office, submitted mail ballot
applications for his sons, Darrell, 31; Tremaine, 22, and Wilbur William, 23,
who are all listed as living at Jennings’ home at 115 Sinclair Ave.
The
applications each affirm that Jennings’ sons are “incapacitated to such an
extent that it would be an undue hardship to vote at the polls because of
illness, mental or physical disability, blindness or a serious impairment of
mobility.”
Jennings
said his opponents are playing politics and taking advantage of his family’s
misfortunes.
Darrell,
he said, may never work again due to liver problems. “He is on disability —
he’s got liver problems. He’s sick, he’s very, very sick,” Jennings said. “He’s
been in and out of hospitals.”
His
second son, Tremaine, has also had it rough, and he stays at the house often,
Jennings said.
“He’s
in and out, he has problems. He comes here, he fights with his girlfriend
sometimes, then he comes here.” Though he said that perhaps he had made an
error in listing Tremaine as seriously disabled.
About
his third son, Wilbur William, however, the elder Jennings said he definitely
should not have listed him as disabled, and has withdrawn the application.
While
Anthony Gemma, the self-proclaimed “smoking gun” evidence he presented on
Wednesday and even a secret surveillance video made by his campaign operatives
and given to the Projo has made no link of voter fraud to David Cicilline,
those who have been either caught or accused of tampering with votes in the
past are working with the Gemma campaign to help him traffic his to-date hollow
accusations.
