REPUBLICANS FRAUDULENTLY SWITCHING PARTY REGISTRATIONS, FORGING DOCUMENTS: PERJURY CHARGES FILED; ONE ARREST MADE SO FAR.

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Originally posted at Democratic Underground.

REPUBLICANS FRAUDULENTLY SWITCHING PARTY REGISTRATIONS, FORGING DOCUMENTS: PERJURY CHARGES FILED; ONE ARREST MADE SO FAR

"Election officials and lawmakers have {recently} launched investigations into the activities of {Young Political Majors} YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties {in California} say they are investigating complaints about the company," the LATimes reports.

A second LATimes article is perfectly clear both about Mark Jacoby's personal false registration to vote "at a childhood California address where he no longer lives" so that he could gather signatures in California, and also about the grocery store signature-gathering fraud, and states "dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by his firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM."

LA TIMES: On October 3, the Public Integrity Unit of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office charged Jacoby with four felonies: two counts of voter registration fraud and two counts of perjury. A warrant was issued for his arrest and bail was set at $50,000. {The arrest was made over the weekend near an Ontario, California hotel}

The above two LA Times stories cover fraudulently tricking voters into signing what they were told was a petition against child molestation. The Malibu Times and the Press Enterprise provide additional facts showing for example that YPM was issued 7000 voter registration cards in one county alone, and that 27 of 33 Democrats interviewed in another California County of Bernardino were shocked to find out their party registrations were switched.

MEDIA HAS YET TO BREAK THE STORY BELOW, WHICH GETS BIGGER:

But YPM apparently also engaged in outright forgery of voter signatures, as confirmed by an August 20, 2008 letter from Registrar Dean Logan.

The cause of this is not CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office (as alleged by some Republicans) but outraged voters, dozens of them in one county alone, who discovered their parties were switched, starting in February 2008. According to the complaint to election officials of Tiffany Hoffstetter voters like Hoffstetter are also upset with local election officials like Registrar Dean Logan for his lack of any timely action after the problem first surfaced during the February 2008 primary. Tiffany Hoffstetter has been actually disfranchised in 2 elections now, before getting action from local officials.

(LA Registrar Dean Logan is well known in Washington State, where I lived in 2004, for finding hundreds of ballots in the gubernatorial recount, some of them after the first machine recount, ultimately counted by court order and handing the governorship to Christine Gregoire during the hand recount.)

In an August 20, 2008 letter to student voter Tiffany Hoffstetter, LA County Registrar Dean Logan finally responded to Hofstetter’s repeated complaints:

"We share your concerns that someone falsified your information and signature on a voter registration form and changed your party affiliation. This registration was canceled…"

Registrar Dean Logan went on to say that YPM was not exactly, uh, forthcoming in response to telephone inquiries.  It appears that YPM is ducking the investigation:


Logan continued (and this shows that this is not a SOS Bowen-initiated deal per se):

Based on the "dozens of other reports" referred to above, a warrant was subsequently issued by the Los Angeles DA for Mark Jacoby's arrest, on the publicized charges, but nothing on this forgery, which is still under investigation, though it is confirmed as a Republican YPM forgery, according to Logan's office's letter.

The forged registration document and the person who is listed as the YPM who forged this document is yet another name besides Mark Jacoby. (or an alias of someone)

Under California law, according to a press release by SOS Bowen’s office, it is perjury to provide false information on a voter registration card. I'm sure forgery is illegal as well, somewhere in the California Codes.

There is a legitimate YPM organization in the LA area, called Young Progressive Majority, that does, inter alia, voter registration. See http://goypm.org/get-involved / No one should confuse that YPM organization with the Republican YPM whose members are under investigation or criminal charges in several states.

The difference between ACORN and YPM is the difference between accusations and arrests.  It's the difference between fear and actual disfranchisement.  It's the difference between democracy and hypocrisy.

While the ACORN controversy primarily alleges only potential vote “dilution” if any “illegal votes” happened to be cast assuming any "Mickey Mouse" registrations were ever accepted, this case features actual vote disfranchisement/vote denial, where, for example, Tiffany Hoffstetter was unable to vote in 2 Democratic primaries and was uninterested in the Republican absentee ballot she was mailed, and unable to obtain a timely replacement or change in her party registration status.

That's worth repeating:

TIFFANY HOFFSTETTER'S RIGHT TO VOTE WAS STOLEN, TWICE, BY THE REPUBLICAN YPM.

THIS IS NOT "VOTER FRAUD" WHERE NO VOTES WERE CAST, THIS IS TWO COUNTS OF OUTRIGHT THEFT AND DISFRANCHISEMENT VIA FORGERY

Give a shout-out to DU Robinlynne's persistent reporting and poll monitoring which helped lead to the first arrest, and it probably won't be the last arrest in this developing multi-state GOP vote theft frauds.

Authors Bio:
Paul Lehto practiced law in Washington State for 12 years in business law and consumer fraud, including most recently several years in election law, and is now a clean elections advocate. His forthcoming book is tentatively titled DEFENDING DEMOCRACY. In the past, I co-founded but am no longer an active participant in the San-Diego focused election rights organization Psephos, but I nonetheless recommend their work and reference their site here.