Moore County DA investigates Joe Boylan's Campaign

The Southern Pines Pilot has been keeping the pressure on Joe Boylan for several weeks. Good on ya, Pilot! That's what newspapers are supposed to do. Ask questions, and keep on asking. Too bad the big guys in Raleigh and Charlotte seem to have forgotten that.

He's a proven liar and a sexual harasser.

There is a Moore County Independent story that was reprinted at NC Conservative months ago. (I never found the original) that tied Dee Stewart and Patrick McHenry to this case. Here's some of it:

Pinehurst- A paid staff member of Joe Boylan’s May primary campaign said last week that she never intended to move to Moore County as a permanent resident but registered to vote here so she could cast a ballot for her boss. That could be a violation of state voting laws, elections experts say.

Elizabeth Powell joined Boylan’s campaign staff in March. A native of Cary, the 23-year old said she returned to the Raleigh area on May 3 after her job with Boylan’s campaign ended.

. . .

She was one of two full-time paid campaign staffers used by Boylan in the run up to the primary. The other, Charlotte-area native Kristen Reitler, served as Boylan’s campaign manager from late 2005 through a few weeks prior to the primary, when Boylan defeated long time incumbent Richard Morgan to win the Republican nomination for the county’s state house seat.

The women shared a Pinehurst apartment leased by the Boylan campaign during the time on staff. Reitler also registered to vote in Moore County and cast a ballot in the primary, but has since changed her official residence to Gaston County and registered to vote there. Powell is still registered on the Moore County books and said she planned to vote here in November.

Reitler and Powell cast their primary ballots at the election board’s Carthage offices on April 13, utilizing the county’s “no excuse absentee” early voting program to vote before Election Day. The pair arrived at the offices to vote with Boylan and his extended family on the candidate’s campaign bus.

. . .
At this point, no formal investigation is being considered into the voting records of either former Boylan staff member by state or local officials. According to Don Wright, Chief Council for the State Board of Elections in Raleigh, there have been no challenges filed to either Powell or Reitler’s May votes, the first step required for an investigation to begin. He refused to comment on Powell’s statements, specifically, but did say that actions similar to hers could constitute a violation of law.

“If a person had no intention of making Moore County their home, but registered to vote and voted anyway, they could be in serious trouble,” he said.

These cases didn't get ignored nearly as long as the Gaston case was. I'm wondering if the feds have something on some higher ups and they are pushing these relatively minor voter fraud cases to pressure these staffers to testify about something more serious . . . Or, if it's just when there's one investigation in town, the locals get pressured to pursue these other ones. OR, if there is a pattern of voter fraud that is the problem (look at Karl Rove's tactics over the years) and they need to prosecute these individual cases before they can prove the pattern. Read this:

Reitler and Powell both got their positions with the Boylan campaign through connections with Dee Stewart, Boylan’s Raleigh-based campaign consultant. Stewart also served as campaign consultant for Congressman Patrick McHenry, first elected to represent the 10th Congressional district in the western part of NC in 2004. Some in the district have alleged that the McHenry campaign registered campaign workers from outside the state who were living temporarily in a Cherryville house owned by the Congressman during the race. According to the Gaston County Board of Elections, no challenges or official complaints were ever filed surrounding the allegations.

Reitler worked as a field operative for McHenry in 2004, but did not change her registration during the election. Powell is a political neophyte. The Boylan job was her first out of college, and came, she says, through a cousin who worked for Stewart’s consulting group. Reitler said the current scrutiny of her voting record reminded her of the allegations surrounding the McHenry campaign, which she called “silly.” She says her decision not to register to vote in the 10th District in 2004 shows that she acted legally when she registered to vote here late last year.

“On the McHenry campaign, I knew I was only going to be there for a short time so I kept my registration at my parents’ house,” she said. “The Boylan job was open-ended. After we won, I could have stayed on but I didn’t want to deal with all that stress anymore.

“I’m really into all this stuff – I wouldn’t have registered to vote if I didn’t consider myself a resident of Moore County.”

 
News of the 10th district: See Pat Go Bye Bye,

Republicans complain about alleged voter fraud by Democrats due to lax registration rules and no photo ID at the polls, yet the only documented cases of fraud seem to be by Republicans...

doing what they're doing. It's the only way they can sleep, I guess.

Not only are Republicans the only one's doing it. They are doing it as regular habit. Check this out: Karl Rove's voter fraud fetish Add to that, Patrick has studied at Rove's knee (in more ways than one?) and you have an interesting possibility . . . are the McHenry/Stewart folks doing this as a habit????
 
News of the 10th district: See Pat Go Bye Bye,

"They came, they worked, they registered to vote," Boylan said in October 2006. "If they shouldn't, well, they were just a couple of kids out of college who are Republicans, trying to be good citizens."

Should be:

"They came, they worked, they registered to vote," Boylan said in October 2006. "If they shouldn't well, they were just a couple of kids out of college trying to be good Republicans when they should have been trying to be good citizens."

Because in these days, 'good Republican' is an oxymoron.