On Thursday, Fox News posted a story about voter fraud during the primary election season in Indiana. Four Democrats have been charged with forging the presidential primary petitions needed to get candidates on the ballot.
The article reports:
Among those charged is the former long-time chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party, Butch Morgan, who allegedly ordered the forgeries. He was forced to resign when the allegations were first made public last October, even though his lawyer, Shaw Friedman, told Fox News at the time that Morgan did not do anything wrong.
The St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration‘s Democratic board member, Pam Brunette, Board of Voter Registration worker Beverly Shelton and Democratic volunteer and former board worker Dustin Blythe also face charges.
According to affidavits, St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office worker Lucas Burkett told investigators that he was part of the plan that started in January 2008 “to forge signatures on presidential candidate petitions instead of collecting actual signatures from citizens.”
I have no doubt that campaign workers for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards could have collected enough signatures to put their candidates on the ballot. Why then did they find it necessary to forge the signatures? I have worked on election campaigns. Gathering signatures is time-intensive, but it is a necessary part of the process. I might also add that when campaign workers are gathering signatures, they have a chance to hand out information on their candidates and encourage voters to support their candidates. This fraud actually represents a missed opportunity.
What inspired these Democrats to think they could avoid the process? I am more concerned with the thinking behind the actions than the actual actions. To me, this illustrates that these people have no respect for the electoral process in their state and in America. It is my hope that the people who forged these petitions will not only go to jail, but that they will be denied voting privileges for the rest of their lives. They obviously do not respect the voting process.
