http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/qns_dem_voters_are_real_fishy_GmqsDnq3aXpKKgEtY1lXGK

 

Qns. Dem voters are real fishy

 

By DAVID SEIFMAN City Hall Bureau Chief

Last Updated: 9:17 AM, September 15, 2009

Posted: 5:01 AM, September 15, 2009

 

Her husband died 10 years ago, so a Queens woman was startled to get a letter from the Board of Elections notifying her that he had changed his voter-registration form last month.

 

A Philadelphia businessman was equally perplexed when he received a letter saying his 92-year-old mother had filed a new voter-registration card in July that didn't match her previous form.

 

"She's legally blind and suffering from dementia," the son told The Post yesterday. "I told them the reason for this discrepancy is because the information is fraudulent."

 

Officials say those voter-registration forms were among 1,913 delivered to the Queens board between Aug. 3 and 17 by Lilianna Zulunova, campaign manager for Albert Cohen, one of six candidates running to succeed Councilwoman Melinda Katz (D-Queens) in today's Democratic primary election.

 

More than half the registrations -- 1,037 -- had missing information, so the board sent out letters to the registrants asking that they supply the data.

 

Ninety-two were returned as undeliverable. In at least three cases, the registrants turned out to be dead.

 

Board officials removed those and other suspect registrations from the voter rolls and alerted higher-ups at central headquarters, who say they will conduct a "review" after the November election.

 

Zulunova insisted that Cohen's campaign, which conducted the first exhaustive voter-registration drive in the Bukharan Jewish community, had nothing to do with any fake registrations.

 

"If they're dead, they're no good to me -- they can't vote," she declared.

 

david.seifman@nypost.com