AGAWAM — The Agawam City Council has no plans to act on a resolution proposed by a group alleging widespread fraud in Massachusetts elections, said Council President Rosemary Sandlin.
At the council’s Oct. 7 meeting, during the time set aside for public comments, five volunteers from the group United Sovereign Americans presented and asked the council to vote on a resolution calling for changes to the state’s voting regulations. The resolution cites “an open source audit of the Massachusetts 2022 general election conducted by Massachusetts state citizens.”
The audit claims to have found 751,317 “ineligible or uncertain registration violations” within the state voter rolls, 265,046 votes from “illegible or uncertain registrants” and 87,231 votes higher than the amount of people who voted in the 2022 election, among other things.
“Just like a checkbook must balance, so must our votes,” said Agawam volunteer Rosemary Santaniello.
In response, Councilor Thomas Hendrickson read into the record an email from the Debra O’Malley, director of communications for the secretary of the commonwealth’s office, which oversees elections in Massachusetts.
“This office is not aware of where the group may have obtained the information that they claim to have, as they do not have access to the state voter list,” O’Malley wrote.
She also said the office is aware of the group’s appearances at other towns’ council and select board meetings, and questioned why petitioners were approaching those bodies, instead of the boards of registrars who actually handle voter registrations.
O’Malley sent the email to Agawam resident Corinne Wingard, who emailed the office after reading an article in the West Springfield Record documenting the group’s appearance at the West Springfield Town Council on Aug. 19.
“The quotes in the article indicate that they are not particularly familiar with how elections are run in Massachusetts,” O’Malley wrote.
Hendrickson said, “This stuff is harmful and damaging to our democracy, to have people spreading lies about election integrity. [Town Clerk] Vince Gioscia and our clerk’s office, everybody in the clerk’s office, does a great job running our elections here in Agawam, and we have full faith that they’re behaving appropriately and within what’s legally expected of them.”
Councilor Robert Rossi said Citizen’s Speak Time should “be screened a bit more closely as to what really pertains to the community of Agawam” and the business of the council. He said the council doesn’t have the power to sign petitions or tell people how to vote.
Sandlin said the recently hired Town Solicitor Chris Capucci could handle that.
After the meeting, Sandlin said that “people have a right to their opinion. I don’t agree with [United Sovereign Americans’] opinion.”
United Sovereign Americans is a Missouri-based nonprofit that claims to have found irregularities in vote counts in several states after conducting audits, and has levied federal lawsuits against states like Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio aimed at changing their electoral processes.
Asked if voters can have confidence in the results of Agawam’s elections, Gioscia said, “absolutely.” Gioscia also said his office has not encountered any issues regarding the voter rolls in town.
“We’re really on top of our voter rolls here,” he said.
Gioscia gave two examples of the processes in place to prevent voter fraud. First, if someone completes a mail-in ballot, poll workers on Election Day would already know that person has voted, so he or she couldn’t vote a second time. Second, registering through the state election systems requires people to supply a driver’s license or Social Security number, which is checked by the state.
Asked if there was any way non-citizens would be able to vote, Gioscia said, “not that I’m aware of, not legally.”
