Hempstead schools clerk 'changed the outcome' of board election, investigator alleges, finding ballots in trash bag

The official overseeing Hempstead's recent school board election conspired to keep an ally in office with a series of acts that "changed the outcome" of the vote, leading to cast ballots being found in a dumpster, a district investigator found.

The board has referred its findings to the Nassau district attorney’s office to investigate whether any crimes occurred, according to Ron Edelson, of ZE Creative Communications, the school district’s public relations firm.

Nicole Turso, a spokeswoman for Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly, confirmed the office received the referral and is reviewing the allegations. She declined further comment.

The June 9 report, commissioned by Hempstead schools after the disputed May 19 election, details a series of acts by district clerk April Keys that investigators described as "a concerted effort ... to help her supported candidate," incumbent school board trustee Victor Pratt, defeat three opponents thanks to a slew of absentee and early mail votes.

The allegations against Keys range from not safeguarding election materials — surveillance cameras allegedly captured Pratt leaving her office with about 100 absentee ballots the evening before the election — to her refusing help to process early voting applications, purportedly to avoid "too many hands in the cookie jar," the report stated.

The school board last week formally requested state Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa invalidate the election results and sought permission to hold a new election supervised by the state attorney general’s office, records show. No decision has been made, the department said.

The 243 pages Newsday obtained this week via a Freedom of Information Law request reveal election rigging allegations virtually unheard of in Long Island schools. The allegations are being detailed at a time when the sanctity of elections nationwide — a pillar of American democracy — are being questioned regularly by President Donald Trump ahead of the November midterms.

Hempstead, however, has had disputed trustee elections before. In 2014, the state education commissioner granted a challenge from a losing candidate, ordering a new election following accusations of absentee balloting abuse.

But that petition came from a losing candidate who wound up winning in the new election, rather from the district itself suspecting its clerk of wrongdoing before election certification.

In the investigative report, school district attorney Austin Graff said he suspected the extent of the "potentially criminal conduct" may never be fully known.

"The problem may be much worse than [what] can be proven," he wrote.

The board placed Keys and her assistant Lottie Whitehead on paid leave May 22, three days after the election.

Keys could not be reached for comment Wednesday. She began working for the district in 2008 and was promoted to district clerk in 2023. She has sued the district and other board members in the past. She testified last year in one of those cases that she makes $111,000 as a confidential secretary and a $25,000 stipend as clerk.

Jerald Carter, a retired Nassau County Court judge and a Garden City-based attorney representing Keys, declined to comment on the specific allegations raised in the report because he said he does not have a copy of it, but said: "My client conducted herself in conformity with all election law and conformity with past election practices within the district."

Pratt, first elected to the school board in 2020, did not return messages seeking comment Wednesday.

Searching the trash

The investigative report reveals a string of events that led Graff and another of the district's attorneys, Anthony Fasano, to a dumpster outside the school searching for the contents of a garbage can that originally was in the district clerk’s office three days after the election — before inexplicably going missing, the attorneys alleged.

A video provided by the district shows the two men in suits opening a garbage bag and discovering what they said they believe were cast votes that had been ripped up and mixed in with torn early mail ballot applications.

The ballots and applications were buried in a garbage bag that was tied within a second garbage bag.

"The existence of ripped up cast ballots and ripped up applications in the garbage on May 22, 2026, invites suspicions that such potentially criminal conduct was not an isolated event, and was only a single instance that was caught," Graff wrote.

"Perhaps a sizable number of ripped up cast ballots and ripped up applications were ‘successfully’ discarded before the election or after the election," he added, "but before anyone discovered such criminal conduct occurred."

State law requires that all election material be held for six months, at minimum.

The investigative report said Keys "could not explain" how cast ballots and torn early voting applications landed in the trash, saying only that it wasn’t her and had to be someone else. Graff, who declined to comment for this story, wrote Keys’ explanation "made no sense."

Disparity raised suspicions

The school board became suspicious about the election results after Pratt finished third in machine voting but won the election because he received significantly more absentee ballots than his three opponents, Fasano wrote in the petition to the state. Pratt received 288 votes, 81 more than the next highest candidate.

Hempstead Superintendent Gary Rush declined to comment on the election fixing allegations but said the district hopes the state education commissioner will render a decision by July 1, when the new trustee is to be sworn in.

School board President Jeffrey Spencer did not respond to a request for comment.

Gwendolyn Jackson, who finished second, said in a phone interview she believes Pratt should be disqualified and she be appointed the winner.

"If someone is proven to have cheated, or whatever, I don't understand why we have to do it over again," she said. 

She expressed shock over reading that cast votes were found in the trash.

"Everything points to me having won the election," she said.

The ripped up votes found in the garbage included support for both Jackson and Pratt, according to Graff’s report.

Another one of the losing candidates, retired elementary teacher Eugenia Girtman, expressed disbelief Wednesday: "I just don't believe that people would be ignorant enough to tamper with legal papers."

Caprice Rines, another candidate, said the allegations were "paramount to election fraud."

"I'm hurt and I'm very disappointed that this happened like this," she said. "What are you getting that you want this job so much?"

Investigation opened immediately

The Hempstead board declined to certify the results the night of the election because of the unusual disparity in absentee ballots, and Graff, the district’s labor council, opened his election investigation the next day, according to the records.

Graff’s investigation also uncovered surveillance footage of Pratt allegedly leaving Keys’ office the evening before the election carrying what Graff estimated to be between 75 and 125 absentee ballots.

He wrote that Pratt, when asked about the scene caught on camera, "responded to questions during his interview like he had amnesia, and said he needed help from Keys regarding how to respond to questions about the ballots."

In an interview with Newsday three days after the election, Pratt accused the other members of the board of launching the investigation as a way to unseat him.

"They spent the last year trying to come up with reasons for me to be removed from the board," he said.

The school board launched an investigation into Pratt in November after he was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle during a traffic stop in Uniondale, Newsday reported at the time.

Edelson, the district spokesman, said he did not know how that investigation ended.

'Lot of anger'

Graff’s report also questioned why Pratt briefly met with Keys and a non-employee in Keys’ office after midnight on election night, after Pratt had emerged victorious but the board had decided against immediately certifying the results.

Pratt told the investigator "there was a lot of anger" in that meeting, but Graff argued the mood should have been celebratory if "Pratt had reason to be confident that the election process would withstand scrutiny if investigated."

Graff also criticized why a non-school employee, Tina Lake, met with them. Graff wrote, "It certainly begs the question whether Lake was involved in the mysterious destruction of election materials that were supposed to be preserved and protected from such mischief."

Lake, in a brief phone interview on Wednesday, said, "I had nothing to do with destroying the ballots, absolutely not."

She said she had not seen the district-commissioned investigative report, but questioned whether it was "one-sided," noting boards typically certify election results and put the onus on the losing candidates to challenge the results.

Hempstead's school board in 2015 sought to annul election results but the then-state education commissioner dismissed the board's allegations of fraud, irregularities and disruptions at the polling site.