Paterson City Council President Alex Mendez has been indicted on additional charges of election fraud from his 2020 campaign, Attorney General Matt Platkin announced today.
Mendez is accused of personally collecting vote-by-mail ballots and supervising a VBM operation that allegedly stole ballots from local mailboxes – due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire election was conducted by mail – and then tossing those that weren’t for him.
The state claims that a week before the election, Mendez was personally observed from his wife’s vehicle the emptying of a “large, heavy bag, completely filled with ballots” into a mailbox in Haledon.
Mendez was also accused of witness tampering.
His wife, Yohanny Mendez, and two other Paterson residents were also charged.
“The defendants are accused of attempting to rig an election in their favor and to deprive the voters of Paterson of having their voices heard,” Platkin stated. “The functioning of democracy relies on voters’ trust that their votes count and those votes determine the outcomes of elections.”
U.S. Postal Inspection Service found hundreds of mail-in ballots bound together with rubber bands in a series of mail boxes.
He defeated incumbent William McKoy by 240 votes in Paterson’s 3rd ward.
After Mendez was initially charged, Superior Court Judge Ernest Caposela blocked him from taking office in July 2020 and ordered a new election. The true result of the May 12 race, the judge said, was unknowable, and the move avoided a protracted legal fight.
Mendez beat McKoy by 14 votes. He remains on the council and his colleagues elected him council president earlier this year.
“We allege that Mendez and his associates unlawfully collected ballots and tampered with ballots to give him an unfair edge in the race for the 3rd Ward seat on the Paterson City Council,” said Thomas Eicher, the Executive Director of the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability. “He then allegedly set about undermining our investigation into his and his campaign workers’ unlawful activities.
Now the attorney general’s office claims that blank ballots were used as replacement ballots stolen from voters’ mailboxes.
A Mendez campaign aide, Omar Ledesma, allegedly stole ballots from targeted neighborhoods and apartment buildings known to be supportive of McKoy. Iris Lego was also charged.
According to the attorney general’s officer, the Mendez campaign told some voters to give them their blank ballots which would be completed on their behalf.
Mendez and Councilman Michael Jackson were originally charged with election fraud, mail-in ballot fraud, unauthorized possession of ballots, tampering with public records and falsifying records. Mendez faces additional counts of false registration of transfer and attempted false registration or transfer.
In a related matter, Platkin announced that a 33-year-old Paterson woman, Ninoska Adames, was charged with falsifying a vote-by-mail ballot belonging to a relative and misleading investigators about the alleged crime.
The relative had initially told investigators that Adames gave the ballots directly to Mendez but later changed her story. The ballots connected to Adames were part of a batch of nearly 400 allegedly stolen mail-in ballots dropped at a Haledon mailbox.
“The defendant in this case generated a misleading paper trail with the intent of effectively adding a voter to the 3rd Ward. And that voter’s ballot, along with others, were picked up for delivery by the eventual winner of the election in that section of Paterson,” Platkin said.. “We are committed to bringing suspects to justice when their criminal activities weaken faith in our democracy.”
Adames was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, tampering with public records, falsifying or tampering with records, fraud in casting mail-in vote, and attempting to cast an illegal vote.
