Two weeks ago, we noted a Chicago Tribune story about fraud by either the Indiana Democratic Party or the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns in the 2008 Democratic Primary in Indiana. Now Indiana Republican Party Chairman Eric Holcomb is doing what I urge GOP chairman to do: document all the fraud that actually happens on the ground and the convictions that occur. I always like to point to the 32 convictions from the 2003 East Chicago Democratic Mayoral primary because the election was overturned, and we have testimony under oath of how the various sides try to cheat each other. One example was sort of boring. In 2010, a Muncie city councilman who had been on the city council since 1987 was convicted of mishandling absentee ballots. But the tastiest was a new one.
Mike Marshall, who is running GOTV for the re-election of the Democratic mayor of Jeffersonville, right across the river from Louisville, just got indicted on 65 counts of absentee ballot fraud, along with his son and another guy. Now it wasn’t on behalf of the Democratic mayor. Mr. Marshall was responsible for a huge chunk of campaign expenditures:
Marshall was one of several people that Galligan personally thanked during his victory speech on primary night in May. According to the latest campaign finance reports, filed Friday, Galligan’s campaign paid Marshall’s business, North Vernon-based At Your Service Co., more than $52,710.23 through the year — almost a third of the campaign’s total expenditures.
“He was in charge of getting out the vote,” Galligan said. When asked to elaborate on what those duties entailed, he referred questions to campaign manager Phil McCauley.
Get out the vote, eh? Well, it turned out that they knew about one allegation of the vote being gotten out improperly.
Republicans in Jennings County challenged several absentee ballots that were submitted in 2010, according to Negangard. Democrats subsequently ran an advertisement in the North Vernon Plain Dealer accusing the Republicans of trying to deny those absentee voters their constitutional rights. One of those voters identified in the ad was a Marine named Ben Cook, who later signed a sworn affidavit stating he’d never cast a ballot. That initiated the larger investigation.
It looked like the Dems improperly voted a Marine, depriving him of his rights. And once they investigated, they found enough material to indict on another 64 charges. Sounds more like a modus operandi than an isolated incident.
H/T Rick Hasen