A former Atlantic City council president and longtime political organizer in New Jersey admitted he was involved in a fraudulent mail-in ballot scheme during the 2022 general election, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Craig Callaway, 64, pleaded guilty to one count of depriving, defrauding, and attempting to deprive and defraud the residents of the state of New Jersey of a fair and impartially conducted election process.
About a month before the Nov. 8, 2022 election, Callaway and an undisclosed number of subordinates promised to pay between $30 and $50 to “numerous” Atlantic City residents “to act as purported authorized messengers” for voters who wished to vote by mail, prosecutors said.
Those messengers then took up to four completed vote-by-mail applications to the Atlantic County Clerk’s Office, showed proof of identification, signed the applications and handed them to the clerk’s office.
When the applications were approved, the messengers handed the ballots to Callaway or his subordinates — even though under state law they were required to deliver mail-in ballots “directly to the voter who requested” them.
Many of those mail-in ballots were cast in the names of voters who later confirmed they hadn’t voted in that election. They also said they hadn’t authorized Callaway or anyone else to cast the ballots for them, according to prosecutors.
Callaway, described by local media as a “veteran ballot harvester who has been involved in unsavory election practices for years,” has worked for both Democrats and Republicans.
He was arrested in February 2024 and charged with casting fraudulent ballots.
At the time, he was working on the re-election campaign of U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew.
Van Drew, a Democrat-turned-Republican representing New Jersey’s 2nd congressional district, has denied any knowledge of the scheme.
Callaway — who previously served more than three years in prison for bribery and a sex blackmail scam — pleaded guilty to the fraud charge in Camden federal court on Thursday.
“The defendant admitted to depriving New Jersey residents of a fair election by participating in a scheme to cast ballots for voters who did not vote in the election,” Acting U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna said in a statement. “Along with our law enforcement partners, we are committed to prosecuting those who criminally seek to undermine impartially conducted elections.”
Callaway is scheduled to be sentenced on June 17.
