BLAS’ VOTE FRAUDSTER
PAC chief arrested in ’08
He sure knows how to pick ’em. The political operative Mayor de Blasio tapped to lead his new “Fairness PAC” was convicted of voter fraud in Barack Obama’s first presidential election, records show.
Daniel “Tate” Hausman was hit with a $1,000 fine and sentenced to a year probation in the battleground state of Ohio, where he had traveled from Brooklyn to launch a get-out-the-vote group backing Obama in September 2008 called Vote Today Ohio.
Rather than voting in New York, Hausman and two colleagues registered and submitted absentee ballots out of their temporary Columbus address, which doubled as the group’s headquarters, records show.
While Hausman met the 30-day residency requirement for registering to vote, Ohio law also requires that voters intend to reside in the state after the election.
“Did I make a mistake? Absolutely. What I did ran afoul of the law and I took my lumps,” Hausman told The Brooklyn Paper in May 2009, a month after his sentencing. “But I was proud as hell when I came out of that voting booth, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we did.”
An online report from The Columbus Dispatch at the time shows that Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Charles Schneider accused the three political mobilizers of purposely voting in Ohio in an attempt to sway the election toward Obama.
“We all know the elections are driven by the Electoral College,” Schneider is quoted as saying. “And casting a vote in an unknown state instead of one where [the outcome] is all but certain . . . excuse me if I remain skeptical.”
Obama won Ohio by a narrow margin of 51 percent to 47 percent; in New York, he romped 63 percent to 36 percent.
Hausman, 32, who most recently led an infrastructure-legislation advocacy group called Millions of Jobs, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
De Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said the mayor was aware of the Ohio scandal before hiring Hausman to direct the PAC, which will support candidates and fund political trips for Hizzoner.
“A decade ago, like tens of millions of Americans, Tate cast a single ballot in the state he was living in at the time,” Phillips said.