The Staten Island District Attorney’s office is investigating allegations that a City Council candidate has committed massive election fraud – including registering a dead man to vote for him.
David Carr, a Republican candidate for the 50th District Council seat representing the borough’s Mid-Island section, fired off a recent letter to DA Michael McMahon asking him to probe whether the campaign of fellow GOP candidate, US Marine Marko Kepi, is running an illegal ballot-harvesting and forgery operation.
Carr told The Post Friday night McMahon’s office is reviewing the allegations, adding the case has been assigned to a prosecutor who requested voter documents Carr collected.
“It’s really despicable, especially at a time when people’s faith in the electoral system has been shaken, that Marko Kepi is trying to steal this election from Staten Island voters,” Carr said.
Both candidates are running in the June 22 Republican primary (early voting began Saturday) to replace term-limited Republican Steve Matteo. Carr is Matteo’s chief of staff. Sal Albanese, a former City Councilman who used to represent parts of southern Brooklyn in the ’80s and 90s, is expected to get the Democratic line.
Evidence presented to the DA, which was reviewed by the Post, includes a voter registration form and absentee ballot application submitted to the city’s Board of Elections on May 28 and June 9 of this year on behalf of a Staten Island resident named Hajrula Bislimi.
One problem: that person died in July 2020 at the age of 85.
Yet, Bislimi’s name is signed on the paperwork, and a Kepi campaign worker, Xheni Hoxha, signed her name as the person Bislimi purportedly authorized to pick up an absentee ballot for the primary.
The new registration forms list Bislimi as a “female” — but with the same date of birth, address, and social-security digits as the dead man. Similar paperwork the real Bislimi signed last year before his death shows a vastly different-looking signature.
When told of the allegation, Bislimi’s son Enver said he planned to call Kepi’s office.
“I’ll take care of it!” he said. “If he’s deceased, why would they use his name?”
Kepi, a former staffer for ex-state Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), denied wrongdoing and accused Carr of being “desperate.”
“My campaign complies with all of the rules and regulations governing NYC elections, and David Carr is pathetic for alleging otherwise,” he said in an email.
In his letter sent Thursday to McMahon and the NYPD and DOI, Carr said his research also shows that a bevy of other absentee ballot applications turned into BOE by Kepi’s campaign workers also “contain forged signatures that do not match the relevant voter’s signature” previously on record at BOE.
“I believe these ballot harvesting efforts could cast into doubt the outcome of the coming Republican Primary elections for Mayor, Staten Island Borough President, and the 50th Council District, and they should be investigated before any damage is done to our electoral process,” the document says.
McMahon did not return messages.