Had the same thing been carried out by a worker for the now-defunct ACORN, Republicans — and even Newt Gingrich — would have called it massive “voter fraud.” But the 1,500 acts of fraud, by Gingrich’s own admission, were carried out by a worker hired by his campaign, so it seems the media have barely noticed it.
Nonetheless, The BRAD BLOG has received confirmation from two different state agencies that the 1,500 alleged cases of ballot petition fraud said to have been carried out on behalf of the Gingrich campaign, in their unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the Republican primary ballot in Virginia, are now being carried out by the state Attorney General’s office.
In late December, after Gingrich had failed to turn in enough valid signatures to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, he was caught on video tape telling a supporter in Iowa that the reason for the failure was due to a campaign worker who created 1,500 fraudulent signatures.
“We turned in 11,100 — we needed 10,000 — 1,500 of them were by one guy who, frankly, committed fraud,” Gingrich is seen and heard saying in video originally aired by CNN.
The former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives downplayed the incident, by explaining to the woman that the entire affair was “just a mistake,” after they had “hired somebody who turned in false signatures.”
Neither he nor his campaign, however, has made the name of the alleged “one guy” public, to our knowledge, despite the extraordinary number of fraudulent signatures created and turned in by that “one guy” in what an official at the Virginia State Board of Elections (SBE) described to us as “definitely an illegal act.”
News of the embarrassing criminal investigation is confirmed today, even as voters go to the polls for Florida’s 2012 GOP Primary, where Gingrich is facing off against front-runner Mitt Romney who, ironically — and uncomfortably enough for Republicans — may also find himself the subject of a criminal voter fraud investigation in the not-too-distant future…
Gingrich fraud investigation confirmed
In mid-January, in a little-noticed blog item by the Washington Post‘s Anita Kumar, it was reported that the SBE was requesting a probe by the office of VA’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) into what SBE chairman Charlie Judd described as “irregularities” found on the Gingrich petitions.
Late last week, SBE Deputy Secretary Justin Riemer confirmed to The BRAD BLOG both the referral to the AG’s office as well as the fact that an investigation into the ballot petition fraud was officially being carried out by the AG.
“We’re not an investigative body, but this issue has been referred to the State AG by the State Board of Elections, after learning of allegations of fraudulent signature gathering in that case, and a number of others,” Riemer told us by telephone. “My understanding is that an investigation is under way,” he said.
When we asked what “other” cases had also been referred to the AG, he pointed us to them for more details, though he characterized the petition signature fraud as described by Gingrich, if true, as “definitely an illegal act.”
“We can confirm that there is an investigation underway,” Brian J. Gottstein, Director of Communication for the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia confirmed to The BRAD BLOG via email on Monday, “but other than that, we cannot comment about an ongoing investigation.”
When pressed as to whether Gingrich and his campaign were cooperating with the investigation, whether they had revealed the name of the “one guy” they claim created 1,500 fraudulent signatures, and what other cases were being probed as a part of the same investigation, Gottstein demurred.
“To maintain the integrity of any investigation, we can’t disclose details. Sorry,” he wrote.
He also responded that our related requests under the state of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) were “exempt” from the act, presumably due to the ongoing criminal investigation.
Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul successfully turned in enough valid petitions to qualify for the GOP primary in VA, which happens to be the home state of Gingrich, formerly a Congressman from Georgia, until he was forced to resign following an unprecedented ethics scandal in which he was fined some $300,000.
‘Worse than what ACORN was accused of’
When Gingrich’s 1,500 cases of alleged fraud first came to light at year’s end, The BRAD BLOG observed that “If the same standards are applied to Newt Gingrich as have, for years, been applied to the now-defunct ACORN organization by both Republicans and their media arm, Fox ‘News,’ then it seems Newt Gingrich’s campaign has committed thousands of acts of voter fraud.”
Indeed, while neither ACORN, nor any of their hired workers have ever been found to have committed even a single instance of voter fraud, a handful of their workers — almost all of whom were discovered and turned in to authorities by ACORN themselves — did commit voter registration fraud by turning in fraudulently signed registration forms. There is no evidence that any of those fraudulent registrations has ever resulted in an actual vote being cast illegally in any election.
Nonetheless, Republicans, lazy (or worse) members of the media, and even Gingrich himself, have all long described those acts of fraud against ACORN as “voter fraud” by the former community organization itself. The relentless, years-long disinformation campaign against ACORN was carried out by the GOP in retaliation for the group’s perfectly legal registration campaign, which succeeded in signing up hundreds of thousands of legal, low- and middle-income voters (who happen to vote largely Democratic) to participate in their own democracy.
When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show picked up on the extraordinary hypocrisy exposed by the Gingrich campaign’s apparent 1,500 acts of fraud — in what guest host Chris Hayes described as being “from the Department of Shameless Schadenfreude” — they pointed to a 2009 op-ed in which the former Speaker had inaccurately blasted ACORN for a crime they never committed. [See the Maddow Show’s video below.]
“ACORN has a long history of engaging in voter fraud,” Gingrich falsely charged in his op-ed at the time, in reference to the exact same thing that Gingrich himself now refers to as little more than “just a mistake”: Submitting thousands of fraudulent signatures to election officials.
Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher, however, notes that what Gingrich admits that his campaign has done “was arguably worse than what ACORN was accused of”:
In fact, ACORN was required, by law, to submit each and every voter registration that they gathered, no matter what, but unlike Gingrich, ACORN reviewed and flagged tens of thousands of dodgy applications to make it easier for registrars to weed out the likes of Mickey and Donald. Although it’s a popular talking point, this type of “fraud†doesn’t result in any fraudulent votes being cast.
Christopher went on to note “Another distinguishing feature between ACORN and Gingrich”:
The biggest difference, though, is that ACORN was registering voters in heavily minority communities, registering the kinds of people that Newt Gingrich wants to fire and replace with poor little inner-city nine year-olds. Registering those people is a heinous crime. Fraudulently getting Newt Gingrich on the Virginia primary ballot, apparently, is just a “mistake.”
Gingrich’s 2009 op-ed was littered with other inaccuracies and scurrilous false charges, including what he described as ACORN’s “illegal and illicit activities.” When it comes to his own actual apparently “illegal and illicit activities,” that is was “just a mistake.” The Virginia Attorney General’s criminal investigation may conclude otherwise.
Their own petard
The long campaign against ACORN has been part and parcel of the even longer GOP campaign to push for Photo ID restrictions on voters at the polling place, despite the dearth of evidence to show that in-person polling place impersonation — the only type of voter fraud which might be deterred by such measures — is actually carried out by more than an infinitesimally tiny number of voters (at very best), out of hundreds of millions of votes cast each year. In fact, according to the George W. Bush Dept. of Justice’s own statistics from 2002 to 2007, during which an unprecedented amount of resources were poured into ferreting out evidence to support GOP claims of a “voter fraud” epidemic among hundreds of millions of votes cast during the period, not a single instance of polling place voter impersonation was uncovered.
That, even as some 25 million legally registered voters nationally — disproportionately minorities, elderly, and students, all of whom tend to vote Democratic — lack the type of state-issued Photo ID required for voting under such laws, and will be put at risk of being disenfranchised by them.
Despite that risk, Republican officials around the nation have pushed over and again for such laws, often resorting to dubious “facts,” such as claims about (non-existent) “voter fraud” by ACORN, or dead voters casting votes at the polling place, in order to support their claims that such measures are needed to combat a “voter fraud” scourge.
Just days ago, for example, after the U.S. Dept. of Justice rejected South Carolina’s new Photo ID restrictions on the grounds that the state’s own data reveal the measure to be discriminatory against minority voters, the state’s Attorney General publicized an apparently specious claim that some 953 “dead voters” had been found to have cast votes in recent elections in the state.
As The BRAD BLOG detailed on Monday, however, claims of those 953 “dead voters” voting in SC appear to be greatly exaggerated, at least according to the state’s chief election official, who testified in response to the allegations before a state legislative committee last week.
Marci Andino, Executive Director of the SC State Election Commission, pointed out during her testimony that, of the handful of names of alleged “dead voters” so far turned over to her office by the AG, not a single one of them has turned out to be an illegal vote. Most of them amounted to clerical errors by poll workers who checked the wrong name in the polls books or, in one case, “an absentee ballot cast by a voter who then died before election day.”
Of the 10 voters claimed by the state DMV to be “dead,” but who were found by the SC Election Commission to have applied for absentee ballots prior to the recent January 21 GOP Primary in the state, Andino noted: “In every case, the signatures on these forms were matched, and each of these ten voters was confirmed to be alive.”
Of course, polling place Photo ID restrictions do nothing to deter absentee ballot voter fraud — far and away the most prevalent type of fraud committed by actual voters — but it hasn’t stopped Republicans like Gingrich was using such incidents to push for polling place photo ID restrictions nonetheless.
Andino concluded her testimony by aptly noting: “Just as one instance of voter fraud is one too many, a single voter denied his or her right to vote because of a clerical error or the vagaries of data analysis is one too many as well.”
Despite the risks of hundreds of thousands of legal voters being unable to cast their previously-legal ballot under such laws in the upcoming Presidential election, the GOP campaign for them has been relentless, and Gingrich has been all too happy to participate in it. When it comes to his own admitted fraud, however, he’s more than happy to look the other way. Most in the media, to date, have unfortunately joined him in that distraction.
Speaking of actual voter fraud, let’s not forget Mitt Romney’s
If pre-election polls hold true, while today’s GOP Primary in the state of Florida may effectively knock out Gingrich from contention for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination, the party’s likely standard bearer, Mitt Romney, seems to have some actual voter fraud issues of his own.
Charges concerning the former Massachusetts Governor’s apparent voter fraud have largely been ignored by the media to date as well, just as the Republican Party would like them to.
As originally highlighted by long-shot Republican Presidential candidate Fred Karger last summer, Romney had been registered to vote in the unfinished basement of his son’s manse in Belmont, Massachusetts long after the former Governor and his wife had sold their own home there, and purchased two others — one in California and another in neighboring New Hampshire.
Despite testimony from local Belmont residents that neither he nor his wife had been seen in the town he was registered to vote in for years, Romney cast a ballot in the January 2010 special election for the U.S. Senate between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakley. However, it wasn’t until July of 2010 that the Romneys once again purchased a small townhouse in MA in preparation for their Presidential run.
Last week, Romney release his federal income tax forms stating his residence to be “Belmont, MA.” However, as we noted at the time, his specific address was redacted, so it’s impossible to know, based on that return, if he used the address at his son’s house or his newly purchased townhouse in the same small town, as his residence for tax purposes that year.
Notably, Romney failed to release his state income tax returns for 2010, nor any of them for years prior. A 2009 return showing his residence to be income-tax free New Hampshire would be damning evidence of voter fraud in the January 2010 election in Massachusetts.
The Romney campaign has failed to respond to several of our queries on this matter seeking to find out whether or not Romney considered himself a resident of Massachusetts, or not, at the time he cast his vote in the January 2010 special election.
At this time, it appears entirely possible that the likely 2012 Presidential nominee for the Republican Party, Mitt Romney, is, himself, a voter fraud criminal, even as his current alternative-of-the-moment, Newt Gingrich, faces a confirmed criminal felony investigation for some 1,500 acts of ballot petition fraud in his own home state of Virginia.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show on 12/29/11 covers Newt Gingrich’s claim that “one guy” turned in 1,500 fraudulent signatures to the Virginia Board of Elections on behalf of his campaign, but that it was little more than “just a mistake”…
Just a quick note – New Hampshire is not income tax free. There is a 5% tax on interest and dividends, and an 8.5% tax on business profits. There is no tax on wage income, but that would be immaterial in Romney’s case.
Newt is a turd, but the filthy toilet we call the republican party is incapable of flushing itself clean.
Amazing how the “Liberal Media” spews endless lies and nonsense about ACORN which committed ZERO fraud of any kind yet says not a word about a Rethuglican campaign guilty as hell of committing voter/election fraud.
Yep that damn Liberal media always covering up for Rethuglicans.
As you say, Brad, it is entirely possible that Mitt Romney committed voter fraud in Massachusetts in 2010.
I’ve set up a petition at change.org asking Massachusetts to investigate; earlier, the elections division suggested that the case had already been investigated in 2001… a little strange for a charge dealing with 2010 elections.
Please consider joining me in signing it:
http://www.change.org/petitions/commonwealth-of-massachusetts-election-division-determine-whether-mitt-romney-committed-voter-fraud-in-the-2010-election
One of the warning signs that a government might be “owned” is a refusal to investigate the wealthy, even when substantial evidence exists to trigger an investigation. The immediate dismissal of serious allegations is often taken by the public to mean that there is no truth to the allegations; in reality, an investigation may simply be undesirable from the point of view of those who would need to conduct the investigation.
In the Romney situation, the facts laid out by Fred Karger seem very straightforward; if they are false, Massachusetts owes it to us to tell us so; if they are true, Massachusetts owes it to us to demonstrate that the wealthy are subject to the same laws as the rest of us.
If you don’t think serious allegations can be swept under the rug, I’d urge you to investigate the charges made by Smedley Butler (a highly decorated retired General in the Marine Corps) regarding an attempted bankers’ coup d’etat against FDR. Perhaps you missed it in your American history books.
Endless vote fraud, yet another violation of our rights. The gov’t constantly violates our rights.
They violate the 1st Amendment by caging protesters and banning books like “America Deceived IIâ€.
They violate the 4th and 5th Amendment by allowing TSA to grope you.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars.
Impeach Obama, support Ron Paul.
Last link of “America Deceived II†before it is completely banned:
http://www.amazon.com/America-Deceived-II-Possession-interrogation/dp/1450257437
The more damning thing for Romney is that he’s possibly claimed several residences in the past decade for tax purposes. He filed in Utah (not a very-low-tax state, but much lower than MA) when he was doing the SLC Olympics. He’s had property in NH since 1997. He presumably filed in MA while in office. Choosing a residency du jour is a luxury not afforded to most Americans, and it’ll make him look less and less like everyone else. Ditto for Cayman accounts. The actual benefit or degree to which he’s in a legal gray area is less important than the impression that he’s afforded advantages not available to everyone else.
The voter fraud thing re: Romney isn’t so strong, even if he filed his tax return in a different state. It’s perfectly legal to qualify as a resident in two different states for taxation and voter registration purposes. You don’t have to live in most states for a majority of the year to claim residency for voter-reg purposes… you just have to be able to credibly consider that state “home.” It’s actually Republicans who like to pretend this isn’t the case in order to disenfranchise college students.
Zach,
The “voter fraud thing” is extremely strong — Massachusetts law is clear that your registered address must be the center of your civic and social life, as well as the place you dwell.
If Romney registered his address as his son’s basement while living in California and/or New Hampshire, wouldn’t that be a clear case of voter fraud?
It will be interesting to see if Romney’s 2009 tax return is filed from low-tax New Hampshire or higher-tax Massachusetts.
Please consider this petition calling for investigation:
http://www.change.org/petitions/commonwealth-of-massachusetts-election-division-determine-whether-mitt-romney-committed-voter-fraud-in-the-2010-election
And Gingrich “wins” South Carolina? Looks like Adelson’s boy wonder is off the rails. LMAO
Not sure how Romney’s efforts to evade state income tax will impact the question of whether he committed voter fraud in the MA 2010 special election, but it looks like the issue may have come back to take a bite out of the hind end of another alleged GOP vote fraudster, Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White.
Opening arguments and testimony began today in White’s criminal trial.
White is “accused of voting in 2010 from an address where he didn’t live and of continuing to take his Fishers town councilman’s salary after moving from the district.”
White used his ex-wife’s address in order to both serve on the Fishers Town Council and to vote in a May 2010 primary instead of the townhouse he had purchased that would become his joint residence with his future wife.
Amongst the evidence presented today by the prosecution was the testimony of Pamela Yongen of the Hamilton Title Co., who closed the loan on the townhouse. Yongen testified White “signed a…document saying the property would be his primary residence so he could get a homestead tax credit.”
Other witnesses and cell phone records are being offered to show White moved into the new residence in January. White contends he was residing at both addresses.
The intriguing feature, of course, is that Indiana’s first in the nation photo ID law was powerless to stop this form of alleged “voter fraud.”
Wow! Couldn’t believe the troll comments over at reddit. Instead of focusing on the verifiable information Brad listed throughout this well-written piece, they complained that this piece did not come from a “refutable” source, whatever that is supposed to be.
After Brad responded, the troll explanation appeared to be that if they were not familiar with The BRAD BLOG, that, somehow, detracted from the content of Brad’s source verifiable story.
Ah, what a world we live in. No matter how many times the MSM lies, some people actually believe that if the MSM doesn’t say it, it isn’t news.
To be fair to Gingrich, the fraud of the 1,500 fake signatures was against him as well as against Virginia.
He paid his signature collectors a piecework rate, i.e. by how many signatures they collected — and this one scammed him by turning in stacks of fakes, taking the money, and disappearing before the fakes were (inevitably) exposed.
Had Gingrich known they were fakes, he could have gone on collecting real signatures to make up the difference, and qualified for the ballot. Because he did NOT know, he was caught short and left off the ballot in his own state.
So there’s a serious lack of motive for Gingrich to have been complicit in this particular fraud.
Yes, Raven, but that’s the point. ACORN didn’t commit voter fraud either, but Fox, the MSM, the GOP and many of the Dems in Congress not only hung the voter fraud label on them but defunded the organization.
I read a lot of alternative news. I have yet to read a negative article about the Ron Paul campaign. Why? Probably because he is as honest as the day is long… There is another force at work here if Gingrich is having to have one person do the “voting” to get him over his limit on the ballot. I saw a video where either the Gingrich or Romney had to pay voters to campaign for them. It doesn’t surprise me.
There are technical meanings to voter fraud, and then there is the generic meaning which is “lying to voters.”
Brad Blog has exposed lots of these technical incursions over the years, as well as generic ones.
The venerable Ron Paul seems to have been caught (by the hacker gang Anonymous) doing voter fraud:
(Int. Business Times). I guess what Ernie said @10 applies, “refutable” sources.
Tommy Christopher’s numbers are bogus.
First, there’s no comparing registration to signatures on a ballot access petition.
And, BradBlog still doesn’t get it.
The thing folks OUGHT to be asking Gingrich is why did he turn in so few signatures.
The Paul and Romney campaigns turned in several thousand signatures more than the required total of VALID signatures, which was 10,000.
To get 10,000 VALID typically one would turn-in 15,000 or more,up to even as many as 20,000.
Gingrich appears to have been going by the “old rules” in which Virginia officials simply didn’t check the signatures and a campaign might be able to cram a bunch of bogus paper under their noses and get on the ballot.
In this case, he failed, he failed on the face of it, and THAT has nothing to do with the supposedly fraudulent signatures submitted by the supposed “one guy”.
THAT is the question to ask the Gingrich campaign.
Are they just stupid OR did they have a hand in creating the extra 1,500 at the last minute (either directly or indirectly, like telling someone, just go out there and come back with 1,500 spaces filled-in)?
The comment by Dredd is idiotic.
An anonymous post supposedly representing a group which calls itself “Anonymous” PROVES what exactly?
For those unwilling or incapable of thought it apparently is something to pass around wherever there is a willing audience.
I don’t read BradBlog to read crap like that posted by Dredd, if I did, I’d post what I suspect is true of Dredd, for I do not know Dredd, have no certain knowledge that there is a human being on that end of the keyboard and so I also have no proof of the claim that Dredd probably one day just might be ensnared in a scandal involving exceptionally freaky behavior.
John P. Slevin @ 15:
Christopher’s numbers aren’t bogus at all. It’s pretty much apples to apples. Verifying legit signatories, whether it’s for voter registration or for a ballot petition. What’s the difference? And why would you want to make excuses for Newt failing to do dilligence the way ACORN did?
Next point. You say:
I think we “get it” just fine. You’d like to ask about Newt’s political acumen, which you are quite welcome to do. Most news sites spend all of their time on exactly that. Very few, however, spend their time focusing on folks like Newt a) attempting to game the system and b) being almost indescribably hypocritical while doing so.
If you’re concerned about the horse race stuff, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of sites reporting on that aspect. We try to cover stuff here that isn’t found at every corporate-sponsored political sight in the whole wide world.
But thanks for your concern.
Also, one last note John. You come very close in your comment @ 16 to Dredd in violating one of our very few rules for commenting here. Specifically, personal attacks on other commenters are not allowed (though you may attack me in that way all you like — so long as you’re prepared to enjoy the return fire in kind 🙂 )
You came close, though maybe didn’t cross that line in your comment to Dredd. So just mentioning it, as you are more than welcome here, whether you disagree with me or any of the other commenters, so long as you mind the few rules of the road here. Thanks!
Update on the Indiana Secretary of State case:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012120203035
Demonstrating once again that the reason GOPers are so sure there’s “election fraud” going on is that THEY’RE DOING IT…