New York Paralegal Blog

NEWARK, NJ—A Newark federal grand jury has indicted Francis X. Gartland, an insurance broker, and Thomas J. O'Leary, the executive director of the South Amboy Housing Authority, for alleged federal election fraud, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced. The six-count indictment, returned by the grand jury on May 17, 2011, and unsealed today, variously charges Gartland, 70, of Baltimore, Md., and O'Leary, 49, of South Amboy, N.J., with conspiracy to defraud the United States, violations of federal elections laws, and causing false statements to be submitted to the Federal Election Commission in connection with the 2006 Democratic primary campaign of Joseph Vas for United States Congress in New Jersey's 13th District. O'Leary surrendered this morning to special agents of the FBI and is scheduled to appear this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Falk in Newark federal court. Gartland, who was separately charged in December 2010 for, among other thi...

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department today announced that it will monitor the municipal election on April 13, 2010, in the city of Walnut, Calif., to ensure compliance with the minority language requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act requires certain jurisdictions with substantial language minority citizen populations to provide all voting materials and assistance in certain minority languages, as well as in English. In April 2007, the Justice Department brought a lawsuit against the city of Walnut alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act involving Korean-speaking and Chinese-speaking voters. The parties subsequently settled the lawsuit, and a federal court entered an order in the case in November 2007.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department announced today the settlement of a lawsuit against Salem County and the borough of Penns Grove, N.J., alleging violations of the rights of Puerto Rican voters under the Voting Rights Act. The settlement agreement requires the county and borough to ensure that elections are equally open to Latino voters, that Spanish language assistance and materials be available at the polls, and that Spanish-speaking voters be allowed to select the assistor of their choice. One of the concerns that led to the Civil Rights Division’s investigation was that the borough and county were violating the rights of voters who had been educated in Spanish in American-flag schools in Puerto Rico. The settlement agreement was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey contemporaneously with the complaint and an accompanying proposed order allowing federal observers to monitor election day activities in its polling place. The order still must be appro...