Massachusetts officials are investigating allegations of voter fraud after video footage appearing to show a woman removing ballots from a mailbox arose out of the city of Lawrence.
The footage, obtained by NBC10 Boston, came from a local man who told the outlet that when he went to vote in person on Election Day on November 7, he was told that he had already voted.
The man, who was not publicly identified, checked his security camera footage and contacted the police when he saw a video of a suspicious woman taking ballots from his mailbox.
The Essex County District Attorney’s Office and Secretary of State William Galvin are now looking into potential voter fraud, the outlet reported.
Galvin said:
We’re going to get all the ballots out of Lawrence, we’re going to get all the mail-in ballots, and we’re going to review everything and all the provisionals and reconcile the list, and if further investigation contacting some of the people who allegedly voted by mail needs to be done, we will do it.
By Tuesday, there were two reports of potential voter fraud in Lawrence.
“There may be more. It’s premature to say how many,” Galvin said.
The second allegation came from a woman who is currently waiting for election officials to decide whether her in-person vote will count after they already received her mail-in vote, which she claims was forged.
“How come it’s not going to be counted if I’m voting right in front of you, and I’m telling you that vote you have there is not mine,” Rosalis González said.
She also filed a police report.
State elections officials told NBC10 Boston that they are sorting through the allegations and that the results will be delivered before the new term begins in January.
“We’re on it. The minute we heard about it, we took action,” Galvin said. “We’ve had a history of sending people to jail when they’ve committed crimes. That’s what we’ll do here.”
Mail theft is a federal offense, so a federal investigation may be opened as well.