Congressional Candidate Forced to Drop Out Over Voter Fraud Allegations
Wendy Rosen, the Democratic nominee for Maryland's 1st Congressional District, is withdrawing from her race after allegations that she may have cast votes in more than one state during two previous elections. The charges were actually raised by Democratic leaders in the state who asked her to step aside and are now scrambling to find a write-in candidate, as the deadline to remove her name from the ballot has passed.
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Rosen lives and works in Maryland, but owns property in Florida and says she registered there in order to vote on local issues. That might have been allowed had she only voted in local elections, but The Baltimore Sun says a search of records shows she particpated in 2006 general elections for governor in both states, as well as the 2008 Democratic primary. When asked if she voted twice in the 2008 presidential primary, Rosen declined to comment to the paper.
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Rosen's departure will likely not affect the outcome of the race or the party control of the House, as Rosen was trailing incumbent Andy Harris in one of Maryland's most Republican-leaning districts. However, the story may play into ongoing fears of voter fraud, which has become a contentious issue in several states including Florida. The Sunshine State has been criticized for it's aggressive purge of the voter rolls; one that identified 180,000 names of people who were possibly registered to illegally. So far the dragnet has caught exactly one person who was actually breaking voter laws, an Austrian-born Canadian man, who has plead guilty last month to falsely pretending to be a U.S. citizen.
