The former Atlantic City leader who raised absentee ballots to a science has questioned claims that a messenger ballot was filled out before it got to a voter..
The Attorney General’s Office is looking into an allegation that a Republican city councilman received a ballot already casting votes for Democratic candidates Phil Murphy for governor, Frank Gilliam for Atlantic City mayor and George Tibbitt to maintain his City Council seat.
City Councilman Jesse Kurtz confirmed he was the one who received the ballot, and that he was given a new, blank one without explanation of what happened.
“The obvious tampering with the vote-by mail ballots seriously calls into question the practices within the Office of the Atlantic County Clerk and/or their ability to maintain the integrity of these ballots,” attorney Randolph Lafferty wrote in a letter to Deputy Attorney General George Cohen on behalf of the Atlantic County Republican Committee.
But former Atlantic City Council President Craig Callaway doesn’t believe the allegation.
“Jesse Kurtz is a vicious liar,” he told BreakingAC. “If I was supporting (the Republicans), you wouldn’t have this story today.”
Callaway — who acknowledges dealing with thousands of such ballots over the years — said he’s never heard of that happening before.
“He’d have a better chance of probably winning the Powerball,” he said.
In response, Kurtz said he cast no blame in his questioning of the “pre-loaded” ballot, and only wants to understand how it happened.
There are procedures in place to protect problems, Atlantic County Clerk Ed McGettigan said in response letter to the Attorney General’s Office.
Callaway and his team have long used the ballots to bring victory what was defeat at the polls.
In 2001, a 1,000-plus absentee vote boost gave Lorenzo Langford the mayoral seat over then-Mayor Jim Whelan, who had a 57-vote win at the polls.
Callaway said Thursday the messengers are important in urban communities because it guarantees those voters a voice. And, unlike mail-in ballots, there is no question that the votes make it to the proper place.
“The post office do not treat mail the same in urban communities,” he said.
Messengers are paid $10 an hour for their work, but not for their votes, Callaway said.
It's the same work he said he did when he supported Guardian four years ago.
Guardian says Callaway never worked for him, and all he heard at the time was that the Callaways were signing up voters to get yes votes for the question to raise the minimum wage.
“He’s got amnesia, just like Langford had amnesia,” Callaway said of Guardian.
Callaway and Langford split shortly after the 2001 election.
Callaway said Guardian “begged me to support him (in this election) and I told him no.”
But Guardian said he didn’t even know Callaway was supporting Gilliam until a Facebook post celebrating the Democratic primary win in June.
When the two sat next to one another at a meal celebrating Ramadan, Guardian said he asked Callaway if he would be neutral in this election.
“He said no, that he made the commitment (to Gilliam) and he was going to live up to his word,” Guardian said.
“Obviously, the bigger question is what’s going on in the clerk’s office with vote by mail,” said the mayor. “It’s the integrity of the vote and it’s the oversight that the clerk’s office needs tp be providing in this that’s the issue. It’s not because the vote came in for Frank.”
