Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh responded to a tweet from President Donald Trump sent late Sunday night where the president used the city's recent voter fraud allegations to argue against vote-by-mail elections.
"The last thing Paterson needs is for Donald Trump to tweet about us. It goes to show how much this last election was compromised," Sayegh said Monday.
Trump tweeted: Bad things happen with Mail-Ins. Just look at Special Election in Patterson, N.J. 19% of Ballots a FRAUD!"
A Passaic County spokesman has said 20% of the vote was disqualified due to varying irregularities. In the final vote sheets, 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but the official results page shows 13,557 votes were counted.
Last week, the New Jersey Attorney General Grewal charged Councilman-elect Alex Mendez and Council Vice President Michael Jackson with election fraud-related counts. Mendez's opponent - longtime Councilman Bill McKoy - filed another legal motion Monday asking for the election to be overturned.
McKoy alleges a woman has admitted to carrying "bundles of ballots" on behalf of the Mendez campaign. The filing by attorney Scott Salmon alleges the woman "...carried numerous stacks of ballots over the course of six hours."
News
"What remains abundantly clear is that this was not just one rogue operative, but an organized and concentrated effort to steal the election by fraudulently manufacturing ballots cast for [Mendez]," Salmon writes in the motion.
The filling comes on the same day Mendez flyers were circulated inviting the public to join his swearing in ceremony scheduled for Wednesday at 11:45 a.m. on the steps of City Hall.
Governor Murphy has called on Mendez and Jackson to "step aside" given the criminal election fraud charges. Both men deny any wrongdoing.
