Remember when Charlie Rangel, the incumbent representative from NY-15, defeated Sen. Adriano Espaillat in June’s primary election? Not so fast: a new report from the New York Daily News suggests Rangel might be involved in a party conspiracy to ensure his victory by wrongly disqualifying hundreds of paper ballots.

On Thursday, Election Board officials started a tally of the nearly 2600 ballots that had been submitted by people who tried to vote, but were told their name was not on the rolls. After the initial re-count, Rangel's lead increased by another 131 votes. But consider two factoids: Rangel won the June primary by only 807 votes; and, Washington Heights and Inwood, Espaillat’s stronghold, has yet to be recounted, meaning that Rangel’s narrow lead could become significantly more narrow.

But what about the 2,000+ additional paper votes the election board dismissed as invalid? According to Aneiry Batsita, the coordinator of the recount operation for the Espaillat campaign, 192 disqualified Manhattanites have so far been discovered to be legitimate Democratic voters. "And we're not even halfway through those that were disqualified," she said.

Batista and here team have discovered a trove of election misdoings. For one, poll workers in the Bronx repeatedly failed to write down the Election and Assembly District in which the vote was cast. There were 170 disqualified ballots missing that information. On 67 of those ballots, the Board of Elections noted that "the person was disqualified for being in the wrong Election or Assembly District." Fishy, no?

The Daily News has pointed to a shady conspiracy between Rangel, his team, Manhattan’s Board of Elections and the Manhattan Democratic Chairman that goes like this: 

Late in June, Timothy Gay, the deputy chief clerk for Manhattan’s Board of Elections, held a meeting with members of Rangel's inner circle and with district leaders supporting Rangel. Nobody from Espaillat's team went to the meeting. There were two topics up for discussion at the meeting: a list of the Democratic inspectors and "election matters in general." Generally speaking, district leaders choose the poll workers who will work in their districts on Election Day (remember how all those poll workers accidentally got all those people's ballots thrown out?). The problem is that "the Board of Elections rejected virtually all the people [district leaders support Espaillat] recommended as poll workers."

What's more, new reports have noted that there were fewer Spanish interpreters in Washington Heights this year than there were in years past. Why is that, if "the board knew to expect a surge of Hispanic voters" to turn out in support of the Dominican candidate, Espaillat?

Really, it's hard to know when a conspiracy is at foot. But with the entire Board of Elections backing Rangel, it's not inconceivable that steps were being taking to secure his victory. Even if there were no coordinated conspiracy to rig the election, ballots were wrongly disqualified, poll workers were unfairly hired, and voters faced unfair language barriers. Conspiracy or not, the primary’s results must have to be reconsidered.

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