Local prosecutors in Marion County, Indiana, charged 12 employees of a Democratic-linked voter recruitment organization of submitting fraudulent voter registration applications prior to the 2016 election.
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors say that 11 temporary canvassers working for the Indiana Voter Registration Project made and sent in an unknown number of fake voter applications. The canvassers’ supervisor, Holiday Burke, was charged as well.
The organization, the AP reported, is managed by Patriot Majority USA a group with strong ties to Democratic Party, including former President Bill Clinton and former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, as well as labor unions.
The investigation by state authorities began last August when a clerk in Hendricks County marked around a dozen voter forms with suspicious information. The probe went into 56 counties where the organization collected 45,000 applications. Patriot Majority rejected the notion the group engaged in any illegal activity.
“We looked onto the Statewide Voter Registration System and noticed that there had been an unusually high number of date of birth and first name changes,” the secretary of state’s office told CNN last October.
If the 12 defendants are found guilty on all charges that include acquiring or sending in voter registration applications known to be false as well as counterfeiting, each could face up to 2 ½ years in prison.
Public Integrity noted in 2013 of Patriot Majority, “Although it describes itself as a grassroots group, a single $6 million donation from an unnamed source made up one-fourth of Patriot Majority USA’s $23 million in 2012 revenue. More than half of its haul, $12 million, came from anonymous donors that gave more than $1 million each, its tax return indicates.”