Atlantic City’s voter fraud king pleads guilty

Former Atlantic City Council President Craig Callaway, a veteran ballot harvester who has been involved in unsavory election practices for years, pleaded guilty to procuring, casting, and tabulating fake vote-by-mail ballots in the November 2022 general election.

Callaway admitted that he and others working for him approached numerous voters in Atlantic City and offered to pay them $30 to $50 to act as authorized messengers for VBM voters.    Those messengers allegedly went to the county clerk’s office with one to four applications for a mail-in ballot, waited for them to be processed, and left in possession of ballots.

Instead of delivering the ballots to the voters, they gave them to Callaway.  Those ballots never made it to the voters, who federal investigators say never authorized the VBM application or submitted a ballot.  Callaway or his team allegedly cast those votes.

“The defendant admitted to depriving New Jersey residents of a fair election by participating in a scheme to cast ballots for voters who did not vote in the election,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna.  “Along with our law enforcement partners, we are committed to prosecuting those who criminally seek to undermine impartially conducted elections.”

Callaway faces five years in prison and is due to be sentenced on June 17 by U.S. District Court Judge Renee Bumb.  He previously spent nearly four years in prison after his conviction on bribery charges.

In 2023, Superior Court Judge Michael Blee permanently barred him from serving as a ballot assister after former State Sen. Colin Bell, the attorney for the Atlantic County Democrats, said that, among other things, Callaway had served as an assistor in the June primary to a voter who had claimed she could not read and write but actually graduated college with honors.

“I believe there was clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Callaway was involved in a voter fraud scheme,” Bell said.  “He has to be stopped from abusing the system.”

In 2015, then-State Sen. James Whelan (D-Atlantic City) got a law passed that limited the number of ballots a voter can serve as a bearer for to three.  Whelan pushed the initiative to combat his belief that Callaway was running a ballot tampering operation.

Atlantic County Democratic Chairman Michael Suleiman said he hoped Callaway’s plea would “finally be the end of a sad chapter in Atlantic County history.”

“When Mr. Callaway was first charged, I was the only public official to say the quiet part out loud: that both Democrats and Republicans were to blame for Callaway’s rise,” he said.  “While candidates of both political parties were inevitably desperate enough to hire him to win, both parties can ultimately be part of the solution.”

Suleiman called for the passage of legislation prohibiting payments to messengers and bearers.

“Despite the efforts of Mr. Callaway over the years and the need to stop ballot harvesting once and for all, let me be clear: voters should not be afraid of Voting by Mail. Voting by Mail is still a safe, easy, and convenient way to vote that is used by tens of thousands of voters in Atlantic County of all political parties,” said Suleiman.  “We cannot allow anyone to exploit Callaway’s shenanigans to denigrate a form of voting that many voters, particularly seniors and the disabled, cherish.”