A Long Island school clerk overseeing board of education elections tore up ballots and threw them in a dumpster to rig the election for a local DJ, a newly revealed internal probe found.
Hempstead Union Free School District Clerk April Keys allegedly rigged the May 19 trustee election by smuggling official ballots out of her office and handing absentee ballots to incumbent candidate Victor Pratt so he could trash them, according to a 51-page peтιтion filed by the district with the state Education Department.
Keys could now face criminal charges as the district is looking to overturn Pratt’s razor-thin win. Pratt is a third-term trustee and former school board president who moonlights as a local DJ under the stage name DJ Vic-Lover, according to his social media.
“The Board of Education Trustee election must be overturned because widespread irregularities affected the outcome of the election and were so pervasive that they vitiated the electoral process,” the filing, from the Hempstead school district’s attorneys, said.
The filing, which was submitted June 15 but emerged Thursday, asks state Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa to order a new one election, with a replacement clerk and oversight by the state Attorney General’s Civil Rights office.
The district launched an internal investigation after it discovered major irregularities in its election for the unpaid trustee seats.
Pratt won by just 81 votes — boosted by a suspiciously large number of absentee and early mail ballots that boosted him to the win even though he only came in third on machine voting, the probe found.
Pratt racked up 87% of absentee votes and 55% of early mail votes, compared to just 27% of in-person machine votes – while other trustee candidates received fewer than 100 absentee and early mail ballots combined, the probe found.
Keys was placed on administrative leave three days after the election, and that same evening, District Superintendent Gary Rush entered her office and discovered an out of place, oversized cafeteria-style garbage can with a tied bag stuffed inside, the peтιтion said.
Rush was shocked to find stolen 2026 election ballots inside — and placed the clerk’s office on lockdown while ordering the door’s locks changed that week, the documents said.
But when investigators returned four days later, the garbage can was gone, allegedly dumped by custodian Owen Peters, who hauled the bag to an outside dumpster that morning while the locksmith was changing the doors, the peтιтion claimed.
Peters later led investigators to the bag, which was sitting in roughly a foot of standing water, according to the documents.
They found ripped-up cast ballots for both Pratt and his top challenger, Gwendolyn Jackson, shredded early mail ballot applications with voters’ names, addresses and signatures still visible, and a jumble of unused ballots and tally sheets, the peтιтion said.
Jackson’s campaign coordinator, identified in the filing as Allah Supreme Mathematics, detailed that he returned roughly 120 filled early mail ballots to Keys’ office on election night — but only 79 were counted, with no explanation ever given for the missing 33, the probe found.
Investigators also found the custodian had been spotted on security footage leaving Keys’ office with a bag full of ballots, and they said he was even coached by Keys to not get caught, the documents said.
“Ms. Keys told him to use a different staircase because the security aide stationed at the bottom of the staircase by the administrative offices would ask questions and it ‘risked appearing suspicious,’” the filing detailed.
But Peters wasn’t the only one allegedly in on the scheme.
The night before the election, Pratt was caught on surveillance footage arriving at the clerk’s office that evening carrying a manila folder, according to the peтιтion.
He allegedly stayed for roughly 90 minutes and was captured walking out of her office with a stack of up to 125 absentee ballots.
When confronted with the footage, Pratt said he didn’t remember having the envelopes, didn’t know what they were for, and had no idea where they were now, the peтιтion said.
Investigators also uncovered what they called evidence of outright forgery, where nine early mail ballot applications appeared to have been written in the same handwriting, and one even misspelled the voter’s first name, according to the documents.
All nine were allegedly stamped as received by the district within a three-minute window on May 18, during the exact time Pratt was inside Keys’ office.
Keys and Pratt didn’t respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Nᴀssau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly’s office confirmed it received the district’s findings and are now investigating.