The Democratic candidate running against Republican incumbent Rep. Lee Zeldin in New York’s midterm elections is seeking a federal probe into Zeldin’s campaign for sending out inaccurate information to voters.
Zeldin’s re-election campaign admitted it mailed out information that gave voters the wrong deadline to return absentee ballots, according to Newsday, but said that additional mailers had been sent that corrected the mistake.
The mailers said voters had to submit their ballots or have them postmarked by Nov. 6, Election Day, but the deadline for the 2018 midterm elections is actually the day before, Nov. 5.
“It’s absolutely outrageous that Lee Zeldin is continuing to pull voter suppression and voter fraud against all of us,” Perry Gershon, who is running against Zelding for his congressional seat, said at a news conference.
In seeking a federal investigation, Gershon also is asking from Zeldin’s campaign to release the list of voters who received the information and mail them the correct information.
New York state election law says that if ballots are not turned in by the deadline, they are disqualified from being counted in the election.
The Zeldin campaign blamed the printer for the mistake on the mailer.
Zeldin’s campaign also listed the wrong deadline to return absentee ballots in 2016, Newsday reported, making the same error or listing the final date to submit ballots as the day after the true deadline.
Gershon said that the inaccurate information in the letter was allegedly targeting college-aged individuals and minority voters.
“This faux outrage on [Gershon’s] part on something that was completely addressed before he said his first word on it has gotten pretty ridiculous,” Zeldin’s campaign spokesman Chris Boyle told Newsday in an email, adding that the claim was “dishonest.”
