BLOOMINGBURG, NY — A group of 27 voters, most of whom were twice deemed ineligible to vote by the Sullivan County Board of Election (BOE), were permitted to decide the vote anyway, and the candidate they backed, Aaron Rabiner, has been certified as the winner of the March 18 election for a spot as a trustee in the Village of Bloomingburg.

Rabiner, and 27 of the challenged voters who supported him, also support developer Shalom Lamm, who is trying to build a controversial 396-unit townhouse development in Bloomingburg. Rabiner’s opponent is incumbent Katherine Roemer, and she is allied with village residents opposed to the development because they consider the development process was seriously flawed.

The reason for the election’s outcome is complex and a bit murky. There was a general election in March 2014, where some 146 voter registrations were challenged by citizens on the belief that the registrants were not lawful residents of Bloomingburg. That case was called Gerardi v. Prusinski (Ann Prusinski is a BOE commissioner). Each one of those challenges was sustained by the BOE when the purported resident could not and would not provide adequate proof of residency, even when under subpoena to appear in court to do so. The BOE ultimately found that the pattern of conduct had an “aura of a sham,” and what appeared to be an attempt stuff the ballot box.

Then, there was an ongoing lawsuit from September 2014 against the BOE by residents of the village in a case called Tiffany Francis v. Ann Prusinski. As part of that case, there was an order in place from the Sullivan Supreme Court that the challenged voters in that case (many of whom were the same as in the March 2014 election) be segregated until the matter of residency could be sorted out by the court. Attorneys for Lamm had intervened in the case.

Without the challenged votes, the referendum at stake in September’s special election won by an overwhelming majority directing the dissolution of Bloomingburg into the town of Mamakating.

After a subsequent lawsuit brought under the name of David Berger v. Rogers, on December 17, the court reversed its prior sequestration order, without notice to the Tiffany Francis parties, and directed all challenged ballots to be opened and counted, such that the referendum was then defeated.

Alan Goldston, an attorney representing Roemer, said, “The Berger action should not have been brought as an entirely separate action, and that procedural dodge that the Berger lawyers used kept us out of the room when the decision to issue an order to the board to count [the challenged votes] was being discussed.”

The reasoning behind Justice Stephan Schick’s order to count the vote is unclear, but another source familiar with the case said that Lamm’s attorney went around Schick and got the order from a different judge. The disposition of that case is still pending due to subsequent determinations by the BOE on February 27, regarding the challenged voters in that case.

On that day, the BOE issued a determination on some 250 challenged voters who were registered as living in Bloomingburg. The overwhelming majority of them were deemed not eligible to vote in the village, and their registrations were due to be cancelled. Among that list were 41 challenged voters whose contested ballots were counted in September’s special election, which was the basis for the defeat of the referendum.

But the BOE did not physically cancel the registrations despite its February 27 determination. Challenges were filed against the voter registrations of other purported Bloomingburg residents prior to the March 18, 2015, election for the trustee position. In an unusual sequence of events, a written stipulation was entered into between attorneys for 27 voters whose names were to be stricken from the voter rolls as per the BOE’s February 27 notice, allowing them to vote despite the determination of ineligibility. The next day, those 27 voters then filed a lawsuit against the BOE, in which the judge endorsed the stipulation, ensuring that their right to vote would not be impinged pending resolution of that case.

By permitting those challenged voters to vote and causing those ballots to be irretrievably cast into the pool of valid votes, even though the BOE had found them ineligible, the challenger, Rabiner, defeated the incumbent by nine votes.

Lori Bertsch-Brustman, an attorney with the Sullivan County District Attorney’s Office, said if the court upholds the BOE determination, the vote can’t be changed, and to seek a remedy, Roemer would need to bring an action to have the whole election thrown out.

Another person familiar with the case said that once a vote is certified, a judge can’t change the outcome, and the only way for Roemer to try to resolve the matter is to report the incident to the New York State Attorney General who has the power to investigate the matter, but only after the candidate is sworn into office.

All of this has sparked action from town and village officials who have hired a public relations firm to get out their message that they would like to see justice in the matter. Mamakating Supervisor Bill Herrmann and Bloomingburg Mayor Frank Gerardi issued a press release saying they are appealing to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman “to step in and engage on matters that Sullivan County District Attorney James Farrell has neglected. The results of the March 18, 2015, Village of Bloomingburg election remain inconclusive because fraudulent votes by those who do not live in Bloomingburg were counted; incumbent Village Trustee Katherine Roemer has not conceded.”

[See editorial on page 6.]