If Republicans are really looking for election fraud, they might want to check on their own party members.
In Massachusetts, the State Ballot Law Commission ruled last week to disqualify Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general from the state’s primary election after they submitted allegedly forged signatures to get their names on the ballot.
Adam Roof, executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, had filed objections to the veracity of the signatures collected by the campaigns of Anne Manning Martin, who is running for lieutenant governor, and Michael Walsh, who is running for attorney general.
Candidates needed to gather 10,000 signatures to appear on the primary ballot. The commission invalidated 1,279 of Martin’s 10,692 signatures and 1,021 of Walsh’s 10,677 signatures.
In Martin’s case, signature gatherer Joe Bronske allegedly used a list of registered Republican voters to forge hundreds of signatures. The allegedly forged signatures were first noticed by another Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, who had also hired Bronske and found he’d collected signatures from deceased voters. When deposed by an attorney for Shawn Oliver, one of Martin’s opponents, Bronske repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment, suggesting he had “something to hide,” according to the ruling.
In Walsh’s case, a handwriting expert determined that many of the signatures from certain towns were “more likely than not written by the same person,” according to the commission’s ruling.
Thousands of miles away in Florida, five people, including three elected officials, have been charged in connection with a scheme to allegedly create and distribute a fake voter guide.
Ahead of the 2024 general election, residents in St. Johns County received flyers that listed the Republican Party’s “official 2024 membership-approved endorsements”—but included a very different list of candidates from the one the party actually supported.
St. Johns County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst, St. Augustine Beach city commissioner and former Mayor Dylan Rumrell, and Jamie Lynn Johnson each face two misdemeanor counts for conspiracy and producing a false voter guide.
Brianna Jordan, Whitehurst’s campaign manager, was also charged with tampering with physical evidence. She allegedly tried to destroy the voter guides after the scheme was discovered.
It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the recent instances of alleged voter fraud are coming from the Republican Party, the same party that idolizes a county clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines, celebrates a rule-skirting billionaire, and bows at the altar of an election denier and alleged fraudster.