The Department of Justice is now reviewing 140 hours of security camera footage from Lewiston City Hall that appears to show NGO workers, operating as so-called interpreters, coaching non-English-speaking Somali voters and in some cases filling out their ballots entirely. That’s not a typo. Filling out their ballots. For them.
U.S. Attorney for Maine Andrew Benson confirmed the probe, telling The Robinson Report, “We review all evidence concerning complaints of voter intimidation and election interference, including the video from Lewiston’s early voting at City Hall.” He added, “We will not tolerate threats to the integrity of our elections, and we look forward to working with the Attorney General’s Office and the Secretary of State’s office to defend our democracy.” Bold words, considering Maine’s Democrat Secretary of State has openly admitted on camera that noncitizens are registered to vote in the state and has refused to hand voter records over to the DOJ.
The footage, obtained by The Maine Wire under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act, covers early in-person voting that began October 13. It shows more than 200 apparently non-English-speaking Somali voters being shepherded through the ballot-casting process by a small group of NGO staffers who were camped out in City Hall for nearly the entire early voting period. Maine law is crystal clear on what translators can and cannot do: they must wait until assistance is requested, cannot influence a voter’s choice, cannot mark a ballot, and cannot approach a voter who hasn’t asked for help. the Lewiston election fraud video shows virtually every one of those rules being violated, repeatedly, by people who apparently never got the memo or just didn’t care.
Among those seen on camera is Safiya Khalid, director of the Community Organizing Alliance, who appears to be orchestrating the movements of translators and voters throughout City Hall. Khalid is a former staffer at Gateway Community Services, a Somali-owned migrant agency that Maine DHHS cut off from MaineCare payments last December following welfare fraud allegations. The agency’s founder, Abdullahi Ali, is currently on the lam in Africa. You really cannot make this stuff up.
When photographs of the irregular behavior first went viral, Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline, who spent $40,000 of his own money to win a $7,000-a-year mayoral job, moved quickly to block photojournalists from documenting what was happening. Sharp move, except the city’s own CCTV cameras kept rolling. The resulting 140 hours of footage is described as electioneering so brazen it would have made Boss Tweed blush. Sheline’s effort to shield the operation from scrutiny says just about everything you need to know about who benefits from it.
In a rich twist, Democrat State Rep. Scott Harriman, who is himself a candidate on the ballot in Lewiston, was spotted in City Hall during a left-wing Maine People’s Alliance march through the building, holding a sign reading “I am voting for my community.” Maine law bans electioneering within 250 feet of any polling place entrance. Apparently the rules are for other people. Three complaints have already been filed with Lewiston police, and a warden tossed one interpreter out of the voting area after he approached a voter who hadn’t asked for help.
This is not happening in a vacuum. The DOJ has charged 48 aliens across five states for illegal voting and fraudulent registration since October 26 alone, with additional indictments in North Carolina, New York, Idaho, and Minnesota. Maine just happens to be the state where the Democrat Secretary of State admits noncitizens are on the rolls and stonewalls federal investigators. Election Day is next Tuesday, and if the DOJ footage shows what it appears to show, Democrats in Lewiston are going to need a lot more than a translated ballot to talk their way out of this one.
