Posted on 06/28/2013 12:25:14 PM PDT by Red Steel
DENVER — The group trying to save state Senate President John Morse from having to face a recall election announced Friday that it believes many of the petitions turned in by recall organizers were forged.
At least 50 people who apparently signed petitions to recall Morse for his support of gun control legislation have now signed affidavits saying that they, in fact, never actually signed a recall petition themselves.
The group “A Whole Lot of People for John Morse” believes that the possible forgeries are more widespread; they say the 50 people who’ve signed their affidavits are just a small sample of the signers.
“These organizers claim to have more than 10,000 signatures, but now it appears they have potentially thousands of forged signatures,” said Christy LeLait, campaign manager for “A Whole Lot of People for John Morse”.
“This is not a grassroots effort. We’re finding that paid signature gatherers got most of these signatures, and we’re seeing that they’ll do anything to get that $3 per petition.”
Organizers said they’ll ask the El Paso County District Attorney to file criminal charges against at least one of the paid signature gatherers.
The announcement in Colorado Springs Friday comes a day after Morse’s legal team made its case before the Secretary of State’s office, which validated the petitions earlier this month, that the signatures aren’t valid because the forms didn’t include language informing signers that a recall election would also force voters in Senate District 11 to pick Morse’s successor.
A spokesperson for the group trying to recall Morse, the Basic Freedoms Defense Fund, told FOX31 Denver Thursday that it followed the law throughout the petition process.
Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert, who presided over Thursday’s hearing, is set to issue her ruling by next Wednesday; the losing side is expected to file an appeal in district court.
If Morse is unable to get the signatures thrown out, he’d become the first state lawmaker in Colorado history to face a recall election.
Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, could become the second.
On Monday, the Secretary of State’s office validated the signatures turned in to force a recall in her district.
Like Morse, Giron is protesting that the petitions circulated weren’t valid.
Is that what you do when you supervise people? Let them run wild?
If the cheating was that bad, they'd have more than 50 fraudulent signatures. The "fraudulent" signatures they do have are Democrat operatives who signed the petition specifically to claim that they didn't.
You really are Saul Alinsky in drag.
More than a thousand in Gingrich’s case. My point stands regardless of your childish and infantile response — the use of paid collectors has caused difficulty, and you are better off using people who actually support your cause, than hired mercenaries.
If you had the ability to supervise them, you’d have a person to actually collect the signatures.
Have you ever actually done a signature drive? It would explain your seeming ignorance.
Why weren't you out there helping them if you know so much?
They could have really used your expertise.
Yes you would. If that is what happened. Which could have, but there is no evidence of that, just speculation.
We also don’t know for certain there were people being paid, but the article claims people were paid, and that the signatures on the pages turned in by people who were paid were forged.
If the signature was forged, then it wasn’t a democratic operative signing and saying they didn’t. If you had volunteers collecting signatures, they would identify the democratic operatives and testify that they saw them sign the forms (in a typical Virginia collection, every signature must be witnessed, and the person collecting the signature then signs each page with a notary, swearing that they observed each signature).
It would make it much more difficult for a democratic operative to sign a form and then claim they did not.
Of course, if you keep collecting signatures until you run out of time, then it makes no difference how many democratic operatives sign your forms and then claim they didn’t, since they will just be additional signatures above what you needed.
As I do not live in the state, it coule well be illegal for me to go to the state and collect signatures (in Virginia, all people collecting signatures must be eligible voters, although I do not know if other states have that same rule).
So far as I can tell, even if the 50 signatures were thrown out (and they could be on sworn affidavits, it has to be a pretty committed operative willing to go to prison for a year and pay a huge fine just to invalidate ONE signature), there still are more than enough signatures for the recall.
And there probably wouldn't have been without paid solicitors.
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