Judge of Elections Domenick J. Demuro pleads guilty to election tampering charges

Domenick J. Demuro from South Philadelphia has pleaded guilty to accepting less than $5,000 in bribes to inflate vote totals for multiple Democratic candidates in 2014, 2015, and 2016 elections. 

According to a Department of Justice release:

“Demuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear. This is utterly reprehensible conduct. The charges announced today do not erase what he did, but they do ensure that he is held to account for those actions,” said U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

Another release goes into more detail, indicating that Demuro accepted the bribes from an unnamed "political consultant". This "consultant", a former elected official, took money from candidates and used part of it to pay Demuro. The prosecutor did not name the candidates or indicate if any of them won, but I've outlined some names below. Commissioner Al Schmidt posted a redacted copy of findings on Twitter.

The 2014 report looks at divisions with more votes than voters. Since multiple records exist - when you enter, the vote itself, and a signature upon leaving - it is fairly easy to identify cases where too many votes were cast. (Of course, Absentee or Provisional Ballots must be taken into account, too. In the case of mail-in voting, the voter's name should get a line-thru, preventing a second vote. This type of simple fraud is trivial to prevent if the desire is truly there. Automated statistical error checking or anomaly detection is also fairly easy as far as those things go.)

Each example in the report consists of three pieces of evidence: a record of two manual signature counts, a copy of the Clerk Book, and copies of the Machine Tapes.

In Ward 39, Division 36 (39-36), there were 25 more machine votes than signatures. This polling place was physically co-located with 26-24, but the report claims there is "no evidence" that voters voted on the wrong machines. They further deny any technology problems. They report exactly 68 signatures and machine votes in 26-24. 

As seen in Table 1, the data from the Poll Book and Clerk Book are close to one another but the Machine Tapes show a much greater number of votes cast.

There were 104 votes despite only 80 or so signatures in the books. There were apparently two voting machines, and these were the tapes:

Demuro pleaded guilty in March, but the feds held the information until the end of May. This may indicate that they're continuing to investigate others, like that "political consultant". In the meantime, I will do some digging of my own.

Judge Domenick J. Demuro fraudulently altered dozens of votes in Ward 39, District 36

Since ballot placement (and luck) have a lot to do with who wins these elections, here's the best copy of the 2015 ballot I could find.

The ultimate winners of the 2015 (general) election: 

2015 Primary election results (Choose 12)

Two of these judges - Scott DiClaudio and Lyris Younge - have already been removed disciplined for misconduct. Their election is most likely a symptom of haphazard downballot voting more than anything else. Both were rated as "NOT RECOMMENDED" by the Philadelphia Bar Association.

Primary results for the entire 39th Ward:

 

Primary results for 39-36, which has around 40 illegal votes. It's hard to say for sure how they're spread out (among at least 3 candidates), but Vince Giusini seems to be doing alright. Hometown advantage?