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Rudy Giuliani voted with an affidavit ballot, which he bashed in failed effort to overturn election

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani personally voted in the 2020 election using a voting method he publicly disparaged and bashed in his attempts to overthrow the presidential election results, a CNN KFile investigation has found.

Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, voted in Manhattan by an affidavit ballot, also known as a provisional ballot, after his name did not appear on the voter rolls when he showed up to vote.

According to records obtained by CNN’s KFile, Giuliani’s registration was moved to his Long Island home in August and his registration in New York City was purged in September. Giuliani told CNN he did not know why his registration was moved to his Long Island home in August and contested that he changed his registration at all.

Giuliani swore in an affidavit oath that he was registered to vote in the Manhattan district and cast his ballot there. A New York City Board of Elections official told CNN the vote would count, citing a provision in the state’s election law.

Giuliani has baselessly claimed that a high number of provisional ballots cast in Pennsylvania proved instances of fraud; he further suggested that voters were given provisional ballots when they showed up to vote after Democrats cast fraudulent ballots on behalf of voters.

“To give you another example, we have 17,000 provisional ballots cast in Pittsburgh. Do you know what a provisional ballot is? Provisional ballot usually happens [sic] this way, and about 15 of the 17,000 happened this way: you walk in and you say, ‘I’m here to vote today.’ ‘Oh, Mr. Giuliani, you already voted.’ ‘I did? I don’t remember voting.’ ‘Oh, yes. Yes. You cast an absentee ballot.’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ ‘Yes, you did.’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ ‘Yes, you did,'” said Giuliani.

Giuliani continued, “Why did it happen 15,000 times that people in Pittsburgh walked in to vote and they had already voted, according to the Democrat election machine? Did they forget? That many people with bad memories in Pittsburgh? Or is the following correct, that, as witnesses will testify, they were instructed by the Democrat bosses when they had a ballot in which there was no one registered, just assign it to somebody, just assign it to Rudy Giuliani. So, maybe Rudy Giuliani won’t show up to vote. And, if he does show up to vote, we’ll give him a provisional ballot.”

In a statement to CNN, Giuliani claimed he never registered to vote elsewhere and said his case was another example of voter irregularities, if not fraud from the New York State Board of Elections.

“I have never been registered anywhere else. I have voted in NY County for 28 years and not move [sic].I was US Attorney there and Mayor. This was one of NY State’s numerous voter irregularities, if not voter fraud. The signature on the Suffolk County registration is clearly a fraud,” Giuliani said in a text message.

CNN reached out multiple times to the New York State BOE for comment but did not receive a response.

CNN obtained copies of Giuliani’s voter file through open records requests to the New York State, New York City, and Suffolk County boards of elections. The file also shows Giuliani has voted by mail nine times in the past, dating back to 2002.

The records initially indicated that Giuliani did not vote in the 2020 election, but a further search found that Giuliani voted in Manhattan on Halloween.

Because Giuliani’s name did not appear on the voter rolls in New York City when he showed up to vote early in Manhattan, he cast an affidavit ballot swearing he was registered to vote in the district where he voted. CNN obtained a copy of Giuliani’s signed affidavit oath swearing he was registered to vote in New York City.

Despite Giuliani not being registered to vote in New York City at the time, New York City Board of Election spokesperson Valerie Vazquez-Diaz told CNN the vote was valid and would be counted. The NYC BOE pointed to a paragraph from a 2019 press release from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office on landmark election legislation on the universal transfer of registration, which says that when a voter moves elsewhere in the state, their registration should “seamlessly” move with them.

The law states that it shall transfer the registration and enrollment “for any voter who submits a ballot in an affidavit ballot envelope which sets forth such a new address,” effectively working as a way to change a voter’s registration on Election Day.

Jerry Goldfeder, a prominent New York election and campaign finance lawyer who previously worked for Cuomo when the governor was the New York attorney general, explained to CNN that the universal transfer of registration is “elastic” and that it gives voters who own multiple homes across the state a choice of where to vote from.

“If a voter has more than one bona fide residence, she or he can choose from which one to register and vote. And the law is sufficiently elastic to allow the voter to switch voting residences back and forth—but of course they can’t vote more than once in an election,” Goldfeder said in an email.

Article Topic Follows: National Politics

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