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Nov. 28, 2023 - Epoch Times

05:07

Cash-for-Votes Scandal Caught on Video Footage | Facts Matter Clips

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	Earlier this month, an election scheme involving paying people cash money for their votes was allegedly uncovered playing itself out in broad daylight.
	Specifically, this was an election scheme wherein homeless people were transported from shelters over to the voting booths, dropped off, and essentially forced to vote in exchange for money.
	And the details of this alleged scheme are pretty wild, so let's go through them together right after you, of course, take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so this video can reach ever more people via the biased algorithm.
	Now, to start with, this alleged scheme all took place over in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, which, just for your reference, is the third largest city in the state, at least in terms of population.
	And like most of Massachusetts, the city of Springfield is a Democrat stronghold, meaning that whoever wins the Democrat primary is almost certainly going to win any citywide election.
	And so with that as the general backdrop, the city of Springfield recently held their primary elections for mayor.
	And in the Democrat primary, there were several candidates.
	I believe there were five candidates in total.
	But for the purposes of today's discussion, these are the two that we'll focus on.
	You had Mr.
	Dominic Sarno, who is the incumbent mayor, and then you have the frontrunner, Mr.
	Justin Hurst, who was a city councilor looking to become mayor.
	Now, on the surface, this is all well and good.
	Going from city councilor to mayor is a natural progression of a political career.
	However, according to reports from local media, according to surveillance footage, as well as sworn affidavits from several of the election workers on site, well, Mr.
	Hurt's campaign allegedly got a bit, you can say, creative with how they were getting the votes.
	Specifically, according to an affidavit from the Springfield Elections Commissioner, quote, And indeed, what's truly interesting about this particular case, at least in my opinion, is that we don't have to rely solely on these sworn affidavits.
	That's because the actual surveillance footage was published online by a local news outlet called Massachusetts Live.
	Take a look.
	So what you're seeing on screen right now is security footage that was shot right outside of City Hall on the morning of October 28th.
	This was during the period of early voting in the mayoral election.
	And what we see here is that at approximately 9am in the morning, what appears to be Mr.
	Justin Hertz pulls up in a black SUV. Then, as you can see, several people proceed to get out of the car and walk towards City Hall.
	Then, the black SUV drives away.
	However, just a few moments later, another black SUV comes to the very same spot.
	And, wouldn't you know it, Mr.
	Hertz then drives up next to that car, and he exchanges some words with the driver.
	Then, the doors of that second SUV open, and the first man comes out, the man in the red shirt, he hovers a little bit on the sidewalk, and he's followed by the driver, the man with whom Mr.
	Hertz was speaking to a moment earlier.
	Afterwards, we can see more people coming out of the car, and also, we can see a third car, the red minivan, come to the curb and drop even more people off.
	And as you can see, the driver of that black SUV, he appears to be standing there and directing all these people from all these different cars to head inside City Hall.
	Now, we don't actually have footage of what it was like inside City Hall, but according to sworn affidavits from the election workers, many of the people who came in, they listed their address as being a local homeless shelter.
	Furthermore, the affidavits claim that many of these voters who came inside were noticeably either drunk or under the influence of drugs, and many of them were confused about why they even came to City Hall in the first place.
	And then, as these people were being processed for voting by the election workers, well, one of the election workers, she wrote in her affidavit that she saw a man, quote, hovering over some of the voters' shoulders while they were standing at the voting booth.
	At times, he appeared to be pointing at the place on the ballot where the person should vote.
	Also, several of the election workers, as well as a local police officer who was working City Hall that day, they claimed that many of these individuals came up to them multiple times throughout the day and asked them where they're supposed to go in order to get the $10 that they were promised as payment.
	For instance, you had Ms.
	Daisy Lorenzana, who was working as an election official on that particular day, and she wrote this in her sworn affidavit.
	Quote, I heard people asking, where is my payment?
	And I was promised $10.
	I had seven people ask me directly where their $10 payment was.
	One man said in Spanish, vote for Hearst and you'll get $10.
	Furthermore, we really don't just have to take their word for it, because it appears that this exchange of money was rather blatant.
	Here's again the security footage from right outside City Hall.
	As you can see, the people are coming out of the building after they voted, and once outside, the election workers wrote in their affidavits that they witnessed a campaign volunteer for Mr.
	Hearst.
	He's the man who was driving that second black SUV. He was handing out cash money to the people who just voted, if they were able to show him that they had a sticker which confirmed that they cast their vote.
	In the video footage, you can even see that the man, after handing one woman some money, gave her a little hug as well.
	And then, the icing on the cake is that some of these individuals were then led down the street before getting into that other black SUV, the one that we saw earlier being driven by Mr.

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