Poll worker prestamped ballots with Byron Brown's name, but no proof of widespread fraud
By Charlie Specht
News Staff Reporter
Updated
A poll worker prestamped no more than 50 ballots with Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown's name on Election Day in the Ellicott District, according to Ralph Mohr, an Erie County elections commissioner. She was fired after a voter reported the error.
The Erie County Board of Elections dismissed a team of poll workers Tuesday after receiving an allegation of a ballot that was prestamped for Mayor Byron W. Brown on Buffalo's West Side.
Election officials will not begin examining the actual write-in votes until Nov. 16 when all absentee and military ballots are returned to the Board of Elections.
A poll worker prestamped Byron W. Brown's name on this ballot that she handed to a voter on Election Day. Brown's name was stamped in the margin of the upper right corner, not in the write-in box at the bottom of the ballot.
In the aftermath of Brown's apparent write-in victory, questions surround whether Buffalo was ever ready to follow the progressive path India Walton's primary victory seemed to have charted.
"The people chose four more years of the Brown administration," Brown said in his speech. "The people chose one of the greatest comeback stories in our history."
The city's most conservative areas – South Buffalo, Lovejoy and the North District – voted overwhelmingly to make Byron Brown the city's first five-term mayor and its first write-in mayor.
A poll worker prestamped no more than 50 ballots with Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown's name on Election Day in the Ellicott District, according to Ralph Mohr, an Erie County elections commissioner. She was fired after a voter reported the error.
A poll worker prestamped Byron W. Brown's name on this ballot that she handed to a voter on Election Day. Brown's name was stamped in the margin of the upper right corner, not in the write-in box at the bottom of the ballot.
