A Long Island school district clerk allegedly tore up legitimate votes, coached a custodian to secretly haul away evidence, and watched as the part-time DJ she was helping waltzed out of her office the night before the election, carrying more than 100 absentee ballots — all to rig a school board race.
New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa threw out the results of the Hempstead Union Free School District’s May 19 trustee election on Thursday and ordered a new vote within 60 days, acting on a 51-page petition that laid out a sprawling ballot fraud scheme orchestrated by District Clerk April Keys.
New York state orders new school election after Long Island clerk accused of trashing ballots to help her candidate win https://t.co/2NWlCgegEs pic.twitter.com/a1Ysbv6mqq
— New York Post (@nypost) June 25, 2026
The beneficiary of the alleged scheme was Victor Prett, a three-term trustee who moonlights as a local DJ under the name DJ Vic-Lover. Prett won his seat by just 81 votes — a margin the district’s attorneys argue was manufactured through systematic fraud.
The numbers told the story on their own. Prett finished third among candidates in head-to-head machine voting, capturing just 27% of those ballots. Yet he somehow claimed 87% of absentee votes and 55% of early mail ballots — a statistical anomaly that triggered the internal investigation.
What investigators found was damning. The night before the election, surveillance footage captured Prett inside Keys’ office for roughly 90 minutes. He left carrying what appeared to be a stack of up to 125 absentee ballots. When confronted, he said he had no memory of the envelopes and no idea where they had gone.
Days after the vote, Superintendent Gary Rush entered Keys’ office and found an oversized cafeteria garbage can — out of place and suspicious. Inside was a tied bag stuffed with ballots. Keys’ office was immediately placed on lockdown. When investigators returned four days later, the garbage can had vanished. A custodian, Owen Peters, had quietly carried it to an outdoor dumpster that morning — a move investigators say Keys orchestrated, allegedly instructing him to take a different staircase to avoid being spotted.
Peters eventually led investigators to the bag, which sat in standing water in the dumpster. Inside: ripped-up cast ballots, shredded mail-in applications with voters’ names still legible, and unused tally sheets. Nine ballot applications appeared to have been written by the same hand, and all nine were stamped as received within a three-minute window on the day Prett was in Keys’ office.
The Nassau County District Attorney has opened a criminal investigation. A temporary clerk has been appointed to oversee the new election.
.png)
.png)
