In what the Los Angeles Times describes as an “election fraud scheme,” criminal charges have been filed against nine people who allegedly bribed homeless people in L.A. with cigarettes and cash in exchange for signatures on ballot initiatives and voter registration forms.
The perpetrators produced hundreds of fake or forged signatures in the 2016 election, as well as this year’s midterms, even registering non-existent people to vote.
L.A.’s skid row was targeted, where the going rate for a destitute individual’s signature was roughly $1 or $2, though in some cases could go as high as $6, according to the report.
The individuals were charged with a whole array of crimes – including circulating a petition with fake names, voter fraud and registering a fictitious person – with the most egregious violators facing over six years in prison.
Using cash and cigarettes as lures, the defendants approached homeless people on skid row and asked them to forge signatures on state ballot measure petitions and voter registration forms, the district attorney’s office said. https://t.co/xZyqqeWXkF
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 21, 2018
Previous such cases have led to no more than a slap on the wrist, however, with jail times being measured in days while others saw their charges dropped altogether.
“The message got sent this is not big deal,” Officer Deon Joseph warned following those previous cases. “They’ll go right back out and do the same thing.”
He was exactly right.
It’s the Little Things
We’ve warned about this time and again on these pages – that voter fraud doesn’t just consist of big name races and glaringly obvious instances of someone waltzing in and casting illegal votes.
It occurs at lower levels and in less obvious ways. Paying the homeless, while not something you or I might think of, has been a fairly common occurrence on the left.
Signature Gatherers Bribed Skid Row Homeless People in ‘Large-Scale Voter Fraud Scheme,’ DA Says https://t.co/YDF7zYoCSC pic.twitter.com/8xSE1E98nv
— KTLA (@KTLA) November 21, 2018
Targeting the Vulnerable
In the days leading up to the 2016 election, Democrat operatives openly admitted to paying the homeless and mentally ill to incite violence at rallies for Republican candidate Donald Trump. It was a means to affect the election by prodding the media to cover Trump supporters as violent racists.
A New York Democrat operative in 2012 admitted that preying on vulnerable people to perpetrate fraud “is really a normal political tactic.”
In that case, various local politicos admitted targeting people who could not speak English, paid poor college kids to register, and convinced mentally impaired individuals to sign ballots.
Good to see seedy individuals in L.A. catching up to their counterparts on the East Coast in their efforts to promote fraud and pay for votes.
“They paid individuals to sign the names,” Officer Joseph, who spearheaded the investigation on skid row, said. “That’s an assault on our democracy.”
It most certainly is.
