A4 eZ re the washington post.monday, july 27 , 2020
BY ROBERT COSTASen. Josh Hawley (r-mo.), a
member of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, said Sunday that he
would not support any nominee
for the Supreme Court unless they
had publicly stated before their
nomination that Roe v. Wade, the
1973 ruling that established feder-
al protection for abortion, was
“wrongly decided.”
“I will vote only for those Su-
preme Court nominees who have
explicitly acknowledged that Roe
v. Wade is wrongly decided,” Haw-
ley said in an interview with
The Washington Post. “By explic-
itly acknowledged, I mean on
the record and before they were
nominated.”
Hawley added: “I don’t want
private assurances from candi-
dates. I don’t want to hear about
their personal views, one way or
another. I’m not looking for fore-
casts about how they may vote in
the future or predications. I don’t
want any of that. I want to see on
the record, as part of their record,
that they have acknowledged in
some forum that Roe v. Wade, as a
legal matter, is wrongly decided.”
Hawley’s new marker comes as
republicans are preparing for the
possibility that President Trump
could name a third member of the
court later this year, should there
be a vacancy.
And it comes as conservatives
nationally are pushing to over-
haul the court’s jurisprudence
supporting the right of a woman
to choose the procedure. But they
have recently been disappointed
by the court’s rulings on this front
— and particularly by Chief Jus-
tice John G. roberts Jr.
Last m onth, the Supreme Court
struck down a restrictive Louisi-
ana abortion law. I t was a dramat-
ic victory for abortion rights activ-
ists and a bitter disappointment
to conservatives in the first show-
down on the issue since Trump’s
remake of the court.
As with other recent liberal
victories at t he court, roberts waskey in the 5-to- 4 decision. He
joined the court’s liberals rather
than his conservative colleagues,
including Trump’s appointees,
Justices Neil m. Gorsuch and
Brett m. Kavanaugh.
Although no vacancy is immi-
nent, White House officials and
some top republicans have pri-
vately discussed the possibility
that Justice Clarence Thomas, a
conservative appointed by
George H.W. Bush, could retire.
Senate majority Leader mitch
mcConnell (r-Ky.) blocked then-
President Barack obama from
making an election-year appoint-
ment to the Supreme Court in- He denied obama’s nomi-
nee, Judge merrick Garland, a
confirmation hearing, saying the
next president should make the
choice.
But mcConnell has said he
would push through a Trump
nominee this year, should an
opening occur. The difference
from 2016, he maintains, is that
now the same political party con-
trols the White House and Senate.
Hawley, 40, a former law pro-
fessor and clerk for roberts, said
in the interview that he is focus-
ing on abortion ahead of the next
Supreme Court nomination be-
cause he believes “roe is central
to judicial philosophy. roe is and
was an unbridled act of judicial
imperialism. It marks the point
the modern Supreme Court said,
‘You know, we don’t h ave to follow
the Constitution. We won’t even
pretend to try.’ ”
Hawley’s salvo could upend the
dynamics of how republicans
evaluate nominees on the issue of
Roe v. Wade — and pressure them
to move away from roberts’s past
statements as a guide.
roberts, during his 2005 con-
firmation hearing, said Roe v.
Wade was “settled as a precedent
of the court,” and his position has
since been cited as republicans
navigate nomination fights.
Sen. Susan Collins (r-maine),
for instance, who supports abor-
tion rights and is up for reelectionthis year, has said she would op-
pose a Supreme Court nominee
who “demonstrates hostility” to
Roe v. Wade. But Collins support-
ed Kavanaugh in 2018 after she
said Kavanaugh told her that he
agreed with roberts.
Hawley said conservatives
must do more to push republi-
cans to the right and take a harder
line.
“This standard, for me, applies
to Supreme Court nominees,
whether they’re a sitting judge or
whatever,” Hawley said. “If there
is no indication in their record
that at any time they have ac-
knowledged that roe was wrong
at the time it was decided, then
I’m not going to vote for them —
and I don’t care who nominates
them.”
Hawley said he has spoken to
Trump and senior White House
officials about his views on the
court and a possible vacancy but
declined to describe those ex-
changes. He a lso declined t o name
any federal judges who wouldmeet his own criteria but did say
there are “many” who would.
“This is not an attempt to push
forward a particular person,”
Hawley said. “This is about where
I’m going to be on Supreme Court
nominees.”
Hawley defeated then-Sen.
Claire mcCaskill (D-mo.) in 2018
and has not yet voted on a Su-
preme Court nominee. Since en-
tering the Senate, he has fre-
quently addressed matters of
abortion and the court, at t imes to
the chagrin of top republicans.
In 2019, Hawley and Sen. To m
Cotton (r-Ark.) privately raised
questions about Neomi rao,
Trump’s nominee for the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit, and how she
would potentially rule on cases
involving abortion. rao later met
with Hawley, who eventually vot-
ed in favor of her nomination.
[email protected]robert barnes and seung Min Kim
contributed to this report.Sen. Hawley lays down strict antiabortion marker for high court nominees
of ballots being tossed for minor
voter errors, according to people
on both sides of the contested
election.
Board officials did not respond
to requests for comment.
To properly return a ballot in
New Jersey, voters must insert it
into a specially provided enve-
lope, which they must sign with
their correct address. They must
then place that envelope into a
second envelope. If they have
allowed someone else to mail
their ballot, the approved “bear-
er” must fill out a special certifica-
tion form. Candidates are not
allowed to serve as bearers.
Ballots can be rejected if voters
miss any steps or if their signa-
tures do not appear to match ones
kept on file by the Board of
Elections, which can compare sig-
natures to decades-old docu-
ments.
According to information re-
leased by the board, nearly 1,
out of the 3,274 ballots thrown
out were rejected because the
board assessed that a voter’s sig-
nature did not match one held on
file. An additional roughly 900
votes found at post offices were
disqualified because the portion
of the ballot for designating a
“bearer” was improperly com-
pleted.
Benjie Wimberly, a Democratic
New Jersey assemblyman who
represents the area, said he
dropped off his vote, along with
that of his wife and two sons, at
the main post office in Paterson.
Later, he learned from local me-
dia reports that his and his fami-
ly’s ballots were among the 19
percent that had been discarded.
According to the B oard of Elec-
tions, they were rejected for hav-
ing an “incomplete bearer por-
tion.”
“I was furious,” Wimberly said.
“This was a complete disaster for
Paterson.”
Sayegh, who is an ally of mc -
Koy, said there were clearly seri-
ous problems with the may vote.
But he said that by citing the high
percentage of disqualified bal-
lots, Trump is overstating the
extent of the potential fraud.
“Some of it was just errors,” he
said of disqualified ballots.
The situation in Paterson is not
unique. This year, tens of thou-
sands of mail ballots have been
discarded by election officials
around the country, many be-
cause of errors completing the
forms or problems verifying voter
signatures.
many jurisdictions that have
had small rates of absentee voting
in the past do not have clear
protocols in place to verify mail
ballots. for that reason, mail bal-
loting is far more likely to exclude
legitimate votes than it is to allow
fraudulent ones to be cast, de-
spite Trump’s assertions, election
experts said.
“ I’m much more concerned
about the potential for disenfran-
chisement — especially inadver-
tent disenfranchisement — than I
am about fraud,” said richard
Hasen, a law professor at the
University of California at Irvine
and a voting law expert.
Despite the problems in his
city, Sayegh said he thinks vote-
by-mail is “the way of the future.”
He called on New Jersey and
other states to do more to educate
voters in advance of the Novem-
ber election on the proper way to
fill out and submit a ballot, in-
cluding that they should not al-
low other people to touch their
ballots.
“It’s going to take a robust
awareness campaign. We have to
be better prepared,” he said. “Pat-
erson was not.”
rosalind.helderman
@washpost.comJosh Dawsey contributed to this
report.He contends that some loose
ballots were stolen from apart-
ment mailrooms. Then, he al-
leges, campaign workers filled
out and cast the ballots for their
preferred candidates, affixing to
the blank ballots images of signa-
tures they had gathered and
saved from past petition drives.
mcKoy’s complaint outlines
other problems with the vote, as
well. It alleges that some voters
never received a ballot and that
the post office failed to deliver
some completed ballots on time,
and it cites videos posted to social
media showing a campaign work-
er filling out a ballot for a voter
and another worker flipping
through a stack of ballots.
The bundle of ballots spotted
five days before the election by a
postal worker was one of several
groups of ballots found at post
offices in the days just before the
election, according to the attor-
ney general’s office.
A statement from the attorney
general’s office said that the in-
vestigation that led to criminal
charges began with the tip from
the U.S. Postal Inspection Service
and that a number of the charges
related “to the improper collec-
tion of mail-in ballots.”
If mcKoy’s allegations are true,
the scheme he outlined would
represent a sophisticated effort to
manufacture illegal votes.
Still, even mcKoy said he be-
lieves such an endeavor would
only be possible on a small scale,
such as his city council race
against mendez, in which just
4,565 votes in total were cast.
It would require operatives
with databases of voter signa-
tures and tightknit political ma-
chines willing to keep quiet about
the fraud — not to mention access
to loose ballots.
Such an effort could not be
replicated, Salmon said, in places
where fewer voters lived in com-
munities with communal mail
rooms — or if the post office
properly delivered ballots in the
first place.
“What happened in Paterson
doesn’t happen everywhere else.
That’s why it should get atten-
tion,” Salmon said, “Because it’s
so rare.”
Paster, speaking on behalf of
mendez, denied the claims in
mcKoy’s suit. He said mendez
believes he will be vindicated.
While Paster said mendez did
not break any rules, he said it was
possible that some campaign
workers in the city helped voters
fill out their ballots or mailed
more than three ballots because
of the unusual circumstances of
the pandemic election.
“The ones that were sick
couldn’t go out, and the ones who
weren’t were petrified,” he said.
“There was not a great deal of
concern by voters about who was
taking their ballots out to the
mail.”
The lawyer alleged that those
who have been charged are being
politically targeted, noting that
they are all opponents of the
current mayor, including men-
dez, who unsuccessfully ran
against him in 2018.
With two seats on the nine-
member council now contested
and vacant, the mayor has main-
tained a majority bloc on the
body. Sayegh called those accusa-
tions “absolutely absurd.” The at-
torney general’s office declined to
comment.rejected ballots
one thing both sides agree on:
Not all of the 19 percent of ballots
tossed by the Passaic County
Board of Elections were poten-
tially fraudulent.
After the discovery of the bun-
dle of ballots at the post office,
elections officials began applying
extra scrutiny to mail-in votes —
an approach that led to a numbertake their completed ballots out
to a mailbox, Paster said.
In addition, many voters, par-
ticularly older residents and im-
migrants who are not fluent Eng-
lish speakers, were unfamiliar
with the rules for filling out mail-
in ballots, he said.
The various problems com-
bined to create the “perfectstorm” of conditions for possible
fraud, Salmon said.
So far, the state attorney gener-
al’s office has offered few details
about the specific allegations
against the four men who have
been charged. A spokesman for
the office declined to comment.
But in a formal complaint filed
in court contesting the results of
the election, mcKoy, the longtime
city councilman, lays out his
claims of what happened this
spring.Inspector General was made
aware of “few blank absentee
ballots” discovered in the lobby of
one Paterson apartment building,
investigated and took “appropri-
ate action.”
“The U.S. mail remains a se-
cure, efficient and effective
means for citizens and campaigns
to participate in the electoralprocess,” she said.
Under New Jersey law, people
who vote absentee are supposed
to mail or drop off their own
ballots or designate someone else
to do it for them — but no one is
allowed to deliver more than
three ballots during a single elec-
tion.
But amid the raging virus,
many voters were fearful about
leaving home and all too happy to
have friends, neighbors or volun-
teer campaign workers offer topaign, which did not respond to a
request for comment.allegations of stolen ballots
New Jersey has offered a vote-
by-mail option for years, but in
march, as the novel coronavirus
swept through the state, Gov. P hil
murphy (D) declared upcoming
elections would be the first to be
conducted entirely by mail.
Under new rules, election offi-
cials mailed a ballot to every
active registered voter. Election
experts say such programs can
drive up participation but should
be accompanied by rigorous ef-
forts to make sure that voting
rolls are accurate and up to date.
one of the nation’s m ost dense-
ly populated cities, Paterson is
home to many large apartment
buildings where residents share
communal mail rooms. Photo-
graphs from local media outlets
included in a lawsuit filed by
mcKoy show that in some build-
ings, postal workers failed to de-
liver ballots properly to individu-
al mailboxes, instead leaving
them unattended in a stack in the
mail room.
martha Johnson, a spokes-
woman f or the U.S. Postal Service,
said that the agency’s office ofabout the New Jersey city’s elec-
tion to his advisers. And conser-
vative groups have launched their
own efforts to spotlight the prob-
lems in Paterson, including Judi-
cial Watch and the Honest Elec-
tions Project, which is supported
by attorney Leonard Leo, a close
Trump ally.
But those involved in the Pater-
son case said the president is
vastly oversimplifying what took
place in a local election, using it to
serve his own political purposes
and overstating the extent to
which problems in their city serve
as some kind of national caution-
ary tale.
“He’s not telling the entire
truth,” said Paterson mayor An-
dre Sayegh, a political rival of
those who were charged and a
Democrat who has held the non-
partisan office since 2018. “But
then again, he’s Donald Trump.”
In fact, they say the alleged
scheme in Paterson was a compli-
cated one made possible by a
series of unique circumstances
that would be difficult to repro-
duce in other cities, much less on
a national scale.
They also challenged Trump’s
claim that all of the 3,274 ballots
thrown out by election officials
were potentially fraudulent — lo-
cal leaders said many were reject-
ed because of what they see as
minor errors on the part of voters.
And while the problems with
the may vote illustrate what could
go wrong with mail ballots, they
also show how attempts at fraud
are caught — in this case, the
bundles of ballots were spotted by
alert postal workers.
“We’re not saying vote-by-mail
is inherently wrong or problemat-
ic,” said William mcKoy, a 2 0-year
incumbent of the Paterson City
Council, who, according to final
vote tallies, was defeated in may
by former school board member
Alex mendez, who has been impli-
cated in the alleged scheme.
Added mcKoy’s lawyer, Scott
Salmon, “This is a case study in
what could go wrong. But we
know from experience and from
other towns, the chances of every-
thing going this wrong are so slim
that they just don’t happen any-
where else.”
mendez, who has been barred
by court order from taking office,
has been charged with six felo-
nies, including election fraud, un-
authorized possession of ballots
and tampering with public re-
cords, by the New Jersey Attorney
General’s office.
He denies all wrongdoing, his
lawyer said.
Three other men have also
been charged with felonies, in-
cluding a council member and
the brother of a second council
member. All deny wrongdoing.
“The president’s spin on mail-
in voting is absolutely, 100 per-
cent inaccurate and wrong,” said
Gregg Paster, a lawyer represent-
ing mendez.
P aster noted that Trump has
talked repeatedly about Paterson,
a Democratic city with large Lati-
no and muslim populations, but
has said nothing about a republi-
can congressman from Kansas
charged earlier this month with
voter fraud and remained silent
in 2018 about a republican bal-
lot-harvesting scheme in North
Carolina that resulted in the in-
dictment of a longtime state GoP
operative.
Asked about the Kansas case
on July 16, White House press
secretary Kayleigh mcEnany said
she had not heard of the charges
nor discussed them with the pres-
ident. She then pivoted to talk
about Trump’s “very real con-
cerns about voter fraud” — citing
the New Jersey episode.
A White House spokesman re-
ferred questions to Trump’s cam-
PaTErsoN from a
Leaders involved in N.J. b allot fraud case say Trump isn’t telling whole story
phoTos by ChrisTopher gregory for The WashingTon posT
Paterson, N.J., Councilman William McKoy lost his bid for reelection to a former school board
member implicated in an alleged mail-in ballot fraud scheme. according to his lawsuit, mail carriers
left stacks of ballots in communal mail rooms of apartments like t he Park East Terrace complex, above.“What happened in Paterson doesn’t happen
everywhere else. That’s why it should get attention.
Because it’s so rare.”
Scott Salmon, lawyer for incumbent Councilman William McKoy