Former Troy City Clerk William A. McInerney pleaded guilty Friday to a charge that he signed a voter's signature to a Working Families Party absentee primary ballot in 2009 to steer the vote to his Democratic Party candidates...

Working Family Party voters were targeted in 2009. Some were not fluent in English, and one is deaf. Besides forging voters' signatures, there are allegations that candidates and party workers wrote fictitious reasons on the ballot applications for why the person could not vote at the polls.

State Police arrested McInerney Aug. 8 on 10 felony counts accusing him of handling forged absentee-ballot applications for Democratic and Working Families voters in 2007 and 2008. Smith said those counts pending in Troy City Court will be dropped when McInerney is sentenced at a later date.

In January, the grand jury indicted Democratic Elections Commissioner Edward McDonough and Councilman Michael LoPorto on 116 counts of forgery and falsifying business records. Both pleaded not guilty and await trial.

McDonough and LoPorto are among nine Democrats identified by the special prosecutor in previous legal papers as part of the ballot-fraud probe.

Also named are Council President Clement Campana; Councilmen John Brown, Gary Galuski and Kevin McGrath; and party operatives Dan Brown, who is John Brown's brother, and Anthony DeFiglio, a former Troy Housing Authority clerk.

Numerous voters told Fox News that they were stunned that their signatures were faked on absentee ballot applications and ballots, which were cast as real votes in their names in the 2009 primary election.

Brian Suozzo's absentee ballot application claimed that he was "at home recovering from medical procedure," which he told us was not true.

"Someone took my signature and voted with it and I feel extremely violated," Suozzo said when Fox News first broke the story nationally in 2009. "The whole thing seems dirty to me."...

In November 2009, Democratic operative Anthony DeFiglio told New York State police investigators that faking absentee ballots was a commonplace and accepted practice in political circles, all intended to swing an election.

"This is an on-going scheme and it occurs on both sides of the aisle," he told police. "The people who are targeted live in low-income housing and there is a sense that they are a lot less likely to ask any questions."

He said that "it was common knowledge that these people were never going to receive an absentee ballot. This is a political strategy to get control of a third party line."

Artur Davis's voice is a pretty meaningful one in this debate:

The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.

Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights -- that's suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don't; I've heard the peddlers of these ballots brag about it, I've been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.

There is no question that a voter ID law, in order to pass legal muster and in order to be just, must have certain characteristics. It should contain exceptions for the elderly or disabled who may not drive, and as a consequence lack the most conventional ID, a driver's license. There should also be a process for non-drivers to obtain a photo ID, and the process has to be cost-free, for the simple reason that even a nominal financial impediment to voting looks and feels too much like a poll tax.

On July 7, 2011, the U.S. Department of Treasury's inspector general for tax administration issued a startling report entitled “Individuals Who Are Not Authorized to Work in the United States Were Paid $4.2 Billion in Refundable Credits.”

No wonder the nation’s finances are in turmoil.

According to the Treasury report, foreign nationals not authorized to work in the United States and ineligible for a Social Security Number (SSN) are nevertheless receiving government help from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS currently issues undocumented aliens an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to facilitate their filing of tax returns.

Many illegal workers are paid in cash “under the table” and thus file no tax forms at all; but a number of undocumented workers, according to the Treasury report, are receiving public benefits contrary to federal and state laws.

For example, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) allow payment of federal funds as tax benefits to undocumented aliens. Add to these the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the result is tax refunds that provide incentives for foreign nationals to enter, reside, and work in the United States without authorization and in violation of current U.S. immigration law.

The CTC, ACTC, and EITC have come under review because of the significant volume of Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) returns filing for these credits using fraudulent data, such as names and SSNs.

The Treasury report notes that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) temporarily increased ACTC eligibility by changing the income threshold for calculating the credits in 2009 and 2010. The result was that in 2010, undocumented alien (ITIN) filers were able to claim higher tax refunds that totaled $4.2 billion. They represent an increase from $924 million in 2005.

It is clear that unauthorized aliens are filing ITIN tax returns with fraudulent data. The Treasury report found that “One common type of fraudulent refund involves taxpayers fabricating a Wage and Tax Statement (Form W-2) that shows excess withholding and results in a tax refund.”

Street-smart illegal immigrants are wise to the federal government’s incompetence.