In 'Corrupt and Contented' Philadelphia, The Dead Still Vote

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

On Aug. 18, 2012, Police Officer Moses Walker was robbed and shot to death as he was walking to a bus stop after he finished his night shift at the city's 22nd Police District.

But according to city records, death didn't stop Walker from voting in the 2018 general election.

On July 8, 2012, Police Officer Brian Lorenzo was riding his Highway Patrol motorcycle when he was killed by a drunk driver going the wrong way on I-95.

But after he died, according to city records, Lorenzo miraculously voted in the 2016, 2017, and 2018 general elections.

On Sept. 17, 2017, Gerard Grandzol, a community activist, was shot to death in front of his two-year-old daughter during a robbery.

But according to city records, that didn't stop Grandzol from voting in the Nov. 7, 2017 and 2018 general elections.

When asked about the possibility of voter fraud happening with these three dead voters, Lisa Deeley, chairwoman of the city Board of Elections, did not respond to a request for comment; neither did board Vice-Chair Al Schmidt, or Secretary Omar Sabir. 

The commissioners were busy counting some 350,000 mail ballots in the presidential election, where Philadelphia and the Keystone State may have a big say in determining who becomes president.

Schmidt told WHYY this morning that when it came to counting the votes, "It's more important to do it right rather than meet artificial deadlines."

"We're pushing out the results as quickly as we can. We're not holding back," Schmidt told WHYY. 

Deeley was quoted by the Inquirer as saying, "We're doing the best we can to get the count done as soon as possible, and it's going to be accurate. We'll be done when we're done."

In corrupt and contented Philadelphia, voter fraud is nothing new. 

In July, the feds charged Michael "Ozzie" Myers, a former U.S. Congressman, with eight counts of bribing a poll worker to stuff the ballot boxes with fraudulent votes for specific candidates in the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections.

Myers. a blast from Philly's corrupt past, spent three years in prison in the early 1980s after he was convicted of attempting to bribe a phony Arab sheik offering cash in exchange for political favors in the FBI's infamous Abscam investigation. 

"Money talks in this business and bullshit walks," Myers famously told the FBI during a sting operation where he was caught on camera taking a $50,000 bribe. 

In 2016, 6ABC found 20 cases of the dead voting in Philadelphia. When Elections Commissioner Schmidt was interviewed by the TV station, he blamed innocent mistakes. Some voters who were alive were erroneously listed on death rolls, Schmidt said. Other voters with names similar to dead people mistakenly signed voting records in the wrong spot.

"There is no voter fraud in these cases," Schmidt told the TV station. 

This year, the FBI is investigating the case of how a Philadelphia man with full dementia and confined to a city nursing home was able to vote, both while he was sick with dementia, as well as after he died.

Philadelphia, where the dead come back to life when local Democrats need them. 

It's one of three cases of dead people voting that the FBI is known to be looking at, a source familiar with the investigation told Big Trial.  

In case you're wondering who Lisa Deeley, chairwoman of the city Board of Elections, is pulling for in that presidential election, the photo at right should give you a clue. That's Lisa posing with "The Big Guy."

Neither Deeley nor Commissioners Schmidt and Sabir responded to a request for comment about whether they knew of any dead people who wound up voting for Joe Biden for president.