the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Linwood NJ, A conservative in the New Jersey Republican Primary for the U.S. Senate seat has filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice against New Jersey’s Attorney General for attempting to violate his First and Fourth Amendment Rights by intimidating him and his election campaign.
Hirsh Singh, after consulting with county clerks on the state law, had sent out a mailer informing voters that they could request duplicate ballots if they had wrongly marked them. In response, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office sent a cease-and-desist letter to Hirsh Singh’s campaign claiming that Hirsh Singh’s mailer was against the law and voters could not request another ballot.
However, the official Camden County website states that voters can request duplicate ballots if they marked them incorrectly. The ballots of several counties (including Atlantic County and Ocean County) also clearly state that voters can request duplicate ballots if they incorrectly marked them. Hirsh Singh’s complaint to the Department of Justice points out that the Attorney General’s office has attempted to intimidate him and violate the Free Speech and Free Association clauses of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The complaint further points out that the demand in the letter to produce the list of recipients of Hirsh Singh’s email was in violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
The letter from the Attorney General’s office appeared in the hands of the media and Singh’s opponents around the same time Singh received it, suggesting that it was sent for political purposes and to prevent voters from requesting duplicate ballots. New Jersey’s Attorney General Gurbir Grewal is a Democrat and of Indian descent like Hirsh Singh.
“Our opponents in the Democrat Party behave like they are running a plantation and view people of several races — including those of Indian descent — as house slaves and field slaves and believe that they are using a house slave to control a field slave. This is shameful behavior,” said Arvind Kumar, a key strategist on Hirsh Singh’s campaign.
Hirsh Singh vowed to defend the rights of Americans and said that he will stand up for the Constitution. “This is a fight for Constitutional values. They aren’t just coming after me. They are coming after the American Constitution and the American people. I will never allow this,” he said.
Singh’s complaint also named the New Jersey Secretary of State’s office for improperly helping Singh’s opponent Rikin Mehta, who had gotten onto the ballot by illegally using registered Democrats to circulate the petition necessary to get on the ballot. Petition circulators are required by law to belong to the same party as the candidate. Several signatures on Mehta’s petition were also from Democrats, an unsurprising fact given that Mehta himself was a lifelong Democrat who voted for Obama, praised Obamacare and was awarded political appointments by two Democrat Mayors of Washington D.C.
According to Singh’s complaint, the Secretary of State did not provide the signatures in a timely manner through the proper process, preventing Singh’s campaign from performing a background check on all signatures to dispute their validity. The complaint also accuses the Secretary of State’s office of producing additional signatures at the hearing, which Singh’s campaign could not inspect earlier.
“There is collusion between the ‘Never Trumper’ Republicans, the Democrats and the establishment. They do not want an independent-minded conservative like me to win this primary because I can defeat Cory Booker in the general election and threaten their power structure. Remember that despite claiming to be Republicans, my opponents are the same people who helped Cory Booker win the election in 2013 and it is no surprise that they are working with Democrats against me,” pointed out Hirsh Singh.
