State AG: Reviewing Saddle Rock village election claims

The state attorney general's office is looking into the recent Saddle Rock village election, an agency spokesperson confirmed to Newsday.

Mayor Dan Levy tampered with the village's poll book, which includes the names of registered voters in the municipality, during the March 18 election, according to the Nassau County Board of Elections' chief clerk.

Levy, the village's mayor since 2011, used a red marker to cross out several names in the book, and wrote notes on the pages, said Donna Nogid, the board's chief clerk. Levy told Newsday last week he was a certified poll watcher and he merely highlighted the names of deceased village residents.

Levy also said he instructed poll workers to ask certain voters, whom he suspected did not live in the village, to provide identification.

Nogid said it is illegal in New York State for poll workers to ask voters for identification.

The attorney general's office has not received any formal complaints, the spokesperson said, but it is "informally" reviewing allegations made publicly about the election.

Levy said in an interview on Tuesday the  attorney general's office was "welcome" to look into the election.

"I don't have a problem with that," he said. "We didn't hide anything, and we didn't do anything that's a problem."

Kambiz Akhavan, running on the Friendly Neighbors line, defeated Robert Kraus, a trustee running on the Together for a Better Saddle Rock line, 417-170, to succeed Levy. 

Kraus, who will remain on the board as a trustee, said in an interview Levy's "marking of the poll book raises basic questions about the fairness of the process." 

"It should be investigated," Kraus said. "Is that the way we want to conduct elections in this country? We have to find out what happened and why."

The elections board invalidated petitions for Levy and his slate in February because witnesses failed to sign six of eight pages. The witnesses who did not sign on the designated line included Levy and another trustee, Afshin Tavakoly.

Levy's slate included incumbent trustees Hal Chadow, Alex Kishinevsky and Afshin Tavakoly, as well as village justice Julia Gavriel. 

Chadow ran a write-in campaign and was reelected.

By Joshua Needelman

joshua.needelman@newsday.com

Joshua Needelman covers the Town of North Hempstead for Newsday. A Long Island native and University of Maryland graduate, his work has appeared in publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.