| By Dave Harding, ProgressOhio - Sep 19th, 2008 at 9:50 am EDT |
Possible voter fraud and potential disenfranchisement of voters kept the Allen County Board of Elections busy Thursday morning.
More than half the signatures submitted on petitions related to the payday lending ballot initiative have been rejected by county elections officials as not genuine. Three petitions in particular are going to get some extra scrutiny.
Elections board investigating fraud
Elections Director Keith Cunningham on Thursday updated board members on the possible voter fraud.
"The petitions that were submitted on behalf of the payday lending referendum were among the worst petitions I've seen in 10 years. We have clearly fraudulent petitions - forged names of people we know that have been deceased as long as three to five years. We just simply believe that kind of abuse of the petition system should not be tolerated and we will prosecute those people if we get the chance to."
The elections board voted unanimously to send three petitions, which appeared to have the same circulator, to the Allen County Prosecutor's Office for review.
Cunningham said elections staff reviewed 773 petitions and rejected more than half the 14,955 signatures as possibly forged. Elections staff accepted only 5,651 signatures while rejecting 8,663.
"Most importantly there is a system in place that allows the residents of Ohio to go to the ballot either with an initiative or a referendum of state law and we need to protect the integrity of that system," Cunningham said. "These were just the most blatant we came across. There were others."
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They try and confused people on the summary and the attorney general stops them, so they sue her.
Dead people show up on petitions in Montgomery County and now we see horrible fraud in Allen County. I guess election boards in Dayton and Lima will get sued next.
When you charge 391% interest, I guess you have money to spend on entire lawfirms.
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