Sunday, July 1, 2012

GAB Investigating Recall Fraud

Illegal campaigners of a feather,
 flock together
By golly, the Republicans were right after all. There apparently was some election fraud going on during the recalls. Just not the ones they meant.

WTAQ has the story:
Fradette says he left and started the Committee to Recall Dave Hansen after things got strange with VanderLeest.

“We founded a second one because David VanderLeest was hording all the signatures, wouldn’t let anyone look at them or to verify them if they were real or not or keep count of what we had and it got really strange, so we broke off,” Fradette said in a phone conversation.

Fradette formed a group with David Steffen, who ran against Hansen in 2004 and lost.

Fradette says the GAB is investigating signature collectors that came from out of state, fraudulent signatures, forgeries, and try to ascertain who paid for them.

Fradette says questions also arose about VanderLeest’s involvement.

Fradette mentioned that his second group received help from the Republican Party of Wisconsin as well as the Republican National Committee and says they may have been involved in hiring the out of state petition circulators.

When initially asked about the investigation VanderLeest claimed that the investigation was focused on signatures gathered by the other group.

“It doesn’t appear that any of my signatures collected by my grassroots volunteers are the ones in question”, VanderLeest said.

VanderLeest then stated he didn’t know why this was coming up after more than a year later and labeled this as a “fishing exhibition” and then abruptly hung up the phone after just over a minute.
VanderLeest, if the Gentle Reader will remember, was the default candidate to run against Hansen when the GOP's favored candidate, John Nygren, couldn't even raise the 400 signatures to get on the ballot.

VanderLeest also as a bit of a criminal past that, until now, didn't include committing this kind of fraud.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: When the Republicans started showing their selective outrage, look at what they are complaining about and how that fits into what they have done or are doing. That's more often than not where you are going to find the real issue.

H/T Democurmudgeon

4 comments:

  1. You can find pretty much all the GAB documentation for the Hansen recall - petitions, challenges, responses, etc. - here:

    http://gab.wi.gov/node/1669

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  2. Fishing expedition? They might just catch a flounder!

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  3. I see that a Federal law has been proposed making it a felony to misinform voters about the date and time of an election, where to vote or the documents required.

    I suppose Republicans will block this law as disinformation is such an integral part of their electioneering. And for them it's just such plain fun.

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  4. Speaking of John Nygren, what's the word about him down there?

    ReplyDelete