Ballot gripe bares fam’s secret GOPer

Like any good son, when Working Families Party campaign worker Rafael Shimunov found out that his mother couldn’t vote in the recent primary for the Queens district attorney, he took to Twitter to complain about voter fraud.

Shimunov, whose mother, Margarita Shimunova, is a registered nurse and immigrant from Uzbekistan, voted for insurgent candidate Tiffany Caban by paper ballot because the Board of Elections had her registered as a Republican.

“She’s never voted GOP in her life,” he tweeted in response to an ongoing social media conversation about claims the election was rigged. He went on to describe his mother’s health issues and her struggle immigrating from the former Soviet Union as a refugee.

“It’s not right, I heard they’re going to throw my vote away,” she said.

However, BOE records reveal an awkward family secret: Margarita Shimunova is indeed a registered Republican and therefore wasn’t eligible to vote in the June 25 Democratic primary.

Shimunova confirmed to the Daily News Friday that it was, in fact, her signature and date of birth on the BOE form showing she registered for the party of Lincoln in 2008.

But she denied being a Republican and said that she voted for Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.

Records show that the mom voted in six elections since she registered, mostly general elections in which she could vote for either party. But documents show she also voted in the 2016 Republican primary during which Donald Trump carried his home state with 59% of the vote.

Initially, Caban appeared to have won the primary by 1,100 votes, but after the paper ballots were counted, she trailed her rival Democratic machine candidate Melinda Katz by 16 votes.

Caban supporters like Rafael Shimunov took to Twitter to protest the reversal, claiming the election was rigged.

After he was shown the BOE records, Shimunov took down his accusatory tweets. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment.