New York School Clerk Tore Up, Trashed Ballots to Help Preferred Candidate

The “thing” Democrats insist almost never happens appears to have happened in New York.

An internal investigation has concluded that a Long Island school district clerk improperly handled ballots during a board of education election, prompting officials to seek the reversal of the results and raising the possibility of criminal charges.

According to a 51-page petition filed by the Hempstead Union Free School District with the New York State Education Department, District Clerk April Keys allegedly removed official ballots from her office and provided absentee ballots to incumbent school board candidate Victor Pratt.

Investigators allege Pratt discarded them.

The district is now asking state officials to invalidate the results of the May 19 trustee election, in which Pratt narrowly won another term.

Pratt, a third-term trustee and former president of the school board, also performs locally as a DJ under the stage name “DJ Vic-Lover,” according to public social media profiles.

“The Board of Education Trustee election must be overturned because widespread irregularities affected the outcome of the election and were so pervasive that they vitiated the electoral process,” attorneys for the Hempstead school district wrote in the filing.

The petition, filed June 15 and made public Thursday, asks New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa to throw out the election results and order a new vote.

The district also requested that a replacement clerk oversee the new election and that the New York Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau monitor the process.

The school district launched its internal investigation after officials identified what they described as significant irregularities in the election for the unpaid school board trustee positions, the New York Post reported.

According to the investigation, Pratt won the election by just 81 votes after receiving an unusually large share of absentee and early mail ballots.

Investigators found that while Pratt finished third in votes cast on voting machines, he received 87% of absentee ballots and 55% of early mail ballots.

Other candidates, by comparison, each received fewer than 100 absentee and early mail votes combined.

Three days after the election, the district placed Keys on administrative leave.

Later that day, Superintendent Gary Rush entered her office and, according to the petition, discovered a large cafeteria-style trash can containing a tied garbage bag that investigators considered unusual and potentially relevant to the inquiry, The Post noted.

According to the district’s petition, Rush discovered what investigators identified as official 2026 election ballots inside the garbage bag.

The filing states that Rush immediately secured the clerk’s office and ordered the locks to be changed.

The petition further alleges that when investigators returned four days later, the garbage can had been removed.

District officials claim custodian Owen Peters discarded the bag in an outdoor dumpster while a locksmith was replacing the office locks, the outlet reported.

According to the filing, Peters later directed investigators to the bag, which they found sitting in roughly one foot of standing water inside the dumpster.

The district’s petition says investigators recovered torn cast ballots for both Pratt and his leading challenger, Gwendolyn Jackson, along with shredded early mail ballot applications containing voters’ names, addresses, and signatures.

The filing also says investigators found unused ballots and election tally sheets mixed in with the discarded materials.

The petition further states that Jackson’s campaign coordinator, identified as Allah Supreme Mathematics, told investigators he delivered approximately 120 completed early mail ballots to the district clerk’s office on election night.

However, the investigation found that only 79 of those ballots were ultimately counted, with no explanation provided for the missing 33 ballots, according to the filing.

Investigators also reviewed security footage that they say showed the custodian leaving Keys’ office carrying a bag containing ballots.

The filing further alleges that Keys instructed the custodian on how to avoid being caught while removing the materials.

According to the petition, surveillance footage from the night before the election allegedly shows Pratt arriving at the district clerk’s office carrying a manila folder.

For conservatives, the allegations raise exactly the kind of election integrity concerns that Democrats and the media routinely dismiss as imaginary.

A close race.

A narrow margin.

Unusual absentee ballot patterns.

Ballots allegedly torn, shredded, removed from an office, and found in a dumpster full of standing water.

If even local school board elections can face this level of alleged irregularity, voters have every right to demand stronger safeguards in bigger races with far higher stakes.

The issue is not whether every election is fraudulent.

The issue is whether the system has enough transparency, chain-of-custody protections, and accountability to catch misconduct when it happens.

In Hempstead, officials are now asking the state to overturn the results and hold a new election.

That alone should tell voters how serious the findings are.

Democrats often insist that election fraud is too rare to worry about.

But when ballots are allegedly mishandled, discarded, or destroyed, the public does not need lectures.

It needs answers.