A Pennsylvania Democratic Campaign Professional Is Convicted of Ballot Petition Fraud

A Philadelphia Democratic campaign operative was convicted last week in state court for forging signatures on petitions to have candidates’ names printed on primary election ballots. The candidates were seeking to be placed on the ballot for Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Magisterial District Judge. Pennsylvania requires a certain minimum number of signatures of qualified voters to have a name printed on ballots for each office. As I noted in my column in National Review Online, https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/a-2020-election-audit-is-a-bad-idea-for-pennsylvania-republicans/, ballot petition is a particularly rampant form of election fraud in the Keystone State. This example was a particularly flagrant one, but countless other ballots are permitted to be filed that are base at least in part on fraudulent or invalid signatures or illegal circulation of ballot petitions. Republicans should focus on such real examples of election fraud, while refraining from tolerating foreign interference that benefits them, instead of focusing on false conspiracy theories of election fraud that undermine efforts for election integrity, as I noted in my column.