Last month, the Indiana County Clerk’s Office discovered what appeared to be fraudulent signatures and addresses on hundreds of petitions. federalist It was reported on Thursday.
Indiana State Police launched an investigation last week after St. Joseph County Clerk Amy Rolfes and her staff alerted law enforcement and state election officials to a possible petition forgery scheme.
A volunteer for U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democratic presidential candidate from Minnesota, may have submitted a petition with a seemingly fraudulent signature and address.
The county clerk said on Jan. 25 that campaign volunteers attempted to file about 80 petitions to put Phillips on the state’s presidential ballot. However, the paper was not accepted because important information was missing. Rolfes said volunteers were encouraged to fill out and return a form for submission. The next day, the volunteer returned with his completed 53 pages.
“Oddly enough, there were addresses that simply didn’t exist. The street existed, but the house number didn’t,” Rolfs told The Federalist.
She noted that staff tried to compare the signatures on the petition to signatures in Indiana’s statewide database, but no matches were found.
“We were looking at the signatures and comparing them, and there was nothing similar to them in the statewide system,” Rolfes added. She said the discrepancies in the document were “glaring” and pointed out that it also contained a false postal code.
“We kept saying, ‘That’s invalid, that’s invalid,'” she said.
“They thought, ‘You’ll never see it.’ That’s what they should have thought. It’s like cheating on your homework,” Rolfes continued. “What I do know is that we were doing our job. … I feel like that’s the first line of defense for election integrity. It’s about doing our job. If more people did that, perhaps this problem would come to light even more.”
Ms. Rolfes told The Federalist that she knows the identity of the Phillips campaign volunteer but could not release the details.
After notifying the Indian Elections Division, Rolfes and her team completed processing the paperwork and were instructed to contact police, she told The Federalist. Law enforcement arrived several days later to investigate the situation.
The county clerk said the investigation is still ongoing and local authorities are “making progress.”
“I know they’re not sitting around. They’re taking this very seriously,” she added.
Indiana State Police Sergeant Ted Boehner told The Federalist that he could not comment on pending investigations, but noted that “it will likely be long-term.”
In Indiana, filing a fraudulent campaign petition, demand, declaration, or certification is a Level 6 felony. If convicted, the campaign volunteer could face two and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
“Election fraud in St. Joseph County is not a conspiracy theory; it is reality. This case shows that signature requirements and photo ID are essential elements in ensuring our elections are honest and fair. We show why this is the case,” Rolfes said.
Phillips’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment, according to The Federalist.
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