(The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center is a progressive coalition working on ballot initiative stategies for progressives around the country. I helped co-found it 10 years ago and am still on their board. Their exec director, Kristina Wilfore, sent this important guest post in today. - promoted by Mike Lux)
Electoral gimmick deployed for the second time in California. Giuliani-linked campaign hires signature firm with a history of fraud allegations. Ballot Initiative Strategy Center releases new report on possible signature fraud.
You may remember that last month the original authors of the effort to reassign California's presidential electoral votes by Congressional district backed out of the campaign. Their reason? The initiative's main funders - a shadowy group from Missouri - refused to disclose their main backer.
Alas, sometimes you can't keep a bad idea down. The monster has been re-animated by yet another group of national right-wing strategists - many of whom also have close ties to the Giuliani campaign. They claim to have the funds (nearly $2 million) to collect at least 650,000 signatures by the end of November. Republican consultant David Gilliard told the LA Times, "Our budget is going to be whatever it takes to make the June ballot."
The short timeline for petitioning in California makes this effort to steal the Presidential election particularly open to signature fraud on a massive scale. One key member of this "Team Frankenstein" is Mike Arno, whose signature-gathering firm over the years has racked up fraud allegations from attorneys general and boards of elections in five states since Ballot Initiative Strategy Center began tracking signature fraud.
Among the fraudulent actions Arno has allegedly been engaged in are:
- hiring circulators who lied to the public;
- submitting fraudulent petitions;
- submitting petitions with signatures from the dead;
- illegally registering college students as Republicans;
- training circulators in "bait-and-switch" tactics;
- hosting a 'fraud party' where circulators were taught to forge signatures onto petitions;
- circulating petitions that were different from the initiative submitted to the Secretary of State;
- violating a state's law that prohibits paying circulators by the number of signatures they collect.
You can even watch an Arno circulator in action, here and here, tricking Massachusetts voters into signing the gay marriage ban petition back in 2004.
Last Thursday, I joined party chairman Art Torres in alerting Californians to Arno's alleged dirty tricks, urging Attorney General Jerry Brown to rapidly police deceptive signature gathering practices before any fraudulent gimmicks get on the ballot this year in Californians.The California Dems have created a web page for voters to report circulators caught lying or using "bait and switch" tactics.
For more information on what's going on the ballot initiative world, check out BISC's website here.
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