Wherever the far-left Working Families Party plants its flag, it seems a good bet that you’ll find something a bit shady at work.
Investigators are probing allegations of voter fraud in last month’s WFP primary in upstate Troy — and the party’s county chairman may be implicated.
To be sure, the party there doesn’t boast nearly the operation it does in New York City, where the union- and ACORN-backed behemoth saw its favored pols prevail last week in runoffs for two citywide offices.
Indeed, its ballot line upstate is more often treated as the plaything of the local Republican and Democratic machines: Most WFP “primaries” merely pit Democratic candidates against GOP spoilers.
But the allegations are no less troubling.
All told, nearly three dozen absentee ballots were cast in the name of Troy residents who swore they did no such thing.
And apparently forged applications suspiciously authorized Democratic and WFP operatives, including WFP County Chairman James Welch, to pick up the ballots.
WFP officials blame the scam entirely on “local Democrats.” Maybe they’re right.
But a possible link between voter fraud and the Working Families Party wouldn’t be all that surprising.
Consider:
* The WFP poured resources into New York City primary races through its secretive for-profit arm — raising suspicion that the operation was functioning as a sluice for illegal union cash and drawing a warning from the Campaign Finance Board.
* ACORN, the radical pressure group that helped found the party and shares office space with it, is under investigation in multiple states for voter-registration fraud (to say nothing of helping professed prostitutes forge housing documents and evade taxes).
However the Troy case turns out, the fact remains that a kind of “fraud” lies at the heart of all WFP operations — namely, in the pretension that it’s even a real political party, at least in any traditional sense of the word.
Again, upstate, its ballot line is largely a battleground for cynical major-party games.
In the city, it’s been leveraged to build a powerful front group for union interests.
In both cases, party operatives seem to have a — shall we say? — complicated relationship with the law.
At best.
Democracy suffers as a result.
Any way you look at it.