VoteSmartFlorida.org needs your help NOW. There is a breaking story uncovering signature gathering fraud and VoteSmartFlorida.org will be distributing a letter to the editor in response. Both AP and Gannett News Service released stories that are posted below. These stories appeared in the following papers:

* Bradenton Herald
* Daytona Beach News Journal
* Ft. Myers News-Press
* Gainesville Sun
* Lakeland Ledger
* Northwest Florida Daily News
* Pensacola News Journal
* Sarasota Herald Tribune
* Stuart News
* Winter Haven News Chief.

VoteSmartFlorida.org is crafting a letter to the editor in response to these articles and we need local residents in each of these areas to sign onto these letters. If you can help VoteSmartFlorida.org in this capacity, please email leighb@moore-pr.com immediately with your name, organization, title, address and phone number. We will then email you the article for your review and will submit the letter to the paper upon your approval. Thank you for your continued support of VoteSmartFlorida.org.

Officials investigate signatures

Panhandle ballot petitions seem falsified

By Paige St. John, The News-Press Tallahassee Bureau
Published by news-press.com on June 29, 2004
 

TALLAHASSEE — Prosecutors and election officials in the Panhandle are investigating what they say appears to be more than 1,300 falsified voter signatures on at least three ballot petitions.

“It calls into jeopardy everything our democratic principals stand for,” said John Molchan, the assistant state attorney in Milton who is handling the case.

Molchan said the investigation may take several weeks. Already it entails some 500 suspect petitions turned in to Santa Rosa County and an equal number to Escambia County.

Almost 400 suspected forgeries also have been reported in Okaloosa County. Tipped by criminal investigators, Okaloosa elections officials said they found the same 132 names apparently repeatedly forged on petitions to repeal the high-speed bullet train, cap trial attorneys fees and allow slot machines at horse tracks in south Florida.

Molchan confirmed the case involves several initiatives for constitutional amendments, each seeking by Aug. 3 the required 488,722 signatures to get their issue on the November ballot.

Election supervisors said it appears the same two people — working for multiple signature-gathering companies — are behind the suspected forgeries.

Santa Rosa County elections supervisor Doug Wilkes said the apparent fraud was discovered by chance, when an office worker pitching in to help verify the mountains of petitions arriving daily spotted several that looked like they had been written by the same hand.

Wilkes said she was told to approve them anyway, because staff lack the handwriting analysis skills necessary to spot a forgery.

The next day, the same worker encountered a signature she was sure was forged.

It was her own.

Lee County Supervisor of Elections Sharon Harrington said there haven’t been any major problems in Lee County.

To check for forgeries, voters’ signatures are scanned into computers and then later compared to the petition signatures, she said.

“If it matches, we accept it. If it’s way off, it’s rejected,” Harrington said.

This is why she encourages people to update their signatures every several years. If their signatures change, their petition efforts could be rejected by mistake.

There are 10 petitions circulating to get on the November ballot. A spokesman for one — Derail the Bullet Train, or DEBT — said he did not know if the investigation includes DEBT petitions, but that was a concern of his.

“Anyone who would have petition gatherers needs to know right away, so we can make certain we get to the bottom of it, and do it quickly,” Mark Mills said.

The California-based Arno Political Consulting is being paid to collect DEBT’s petition signatures as well as those for another petition involved in the investigation — the slot machine initiative. Company president Michael Arno also welcomed prosecution.

“The more aggressive the state can be, the better off our business will be,” he said.

At roughly the same time as the discoveries in Santa Rosa County, Escambia County elections supervisor Bonnie Jones said her staff noticed similar penmanship on a thick stack of petitions set aside for further scrutiny.

“When you realize they all look like they all have the same signature style,” it’s amazing, said Lynn Kowalchyk, the assistant supervisor of elections.

She said it appeared the circulators sometimes got a valid signature on one petition, then copied it to petitions for other ballot initiatives.

The signatures weren’t the only tip, Kowalchyk said. “You rarely misspell your own name, or get your birth date wrong,” she said.

For the petition drives, the forgeries’ only cost is not counting those signatures toward the required total to make the ballot.

For the individual collectors who turned them in, the charges for turning in fraudulent petition forms are misdemeanors.

Forging a signature is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine or one year in jail. Submitting that forged signature to the elections supervisor is “uttering,” a five-year, $5,000 offense.

Multiply those charges by the number of petition signatures believed to have been forged, and add theft charges for the money collected for each one of those signatures, and “we view it as really serious,” Molchan said.

County election supervisors are required to verify not only that a petition is signed by an eligible voter, but that the name, address, date of birth and signature all match information on file.

Groups trying to get enough valid signatures typically gather more than are necessary to account for those invalidated by county supervisors. The petitions must be signed by registered Florida voters.

The industry behind those signatures is large.

Amendment proposal backers regularly contract with companies such as Arno to gather signatures, usually paying more than $1 per name.

By the end of March, still early in the process, the political committees behind citizen initiatives aiming to put constitutional amendments on the November ballot had spent $2.6 million with five companies.

National Voter Outreach president Michael Arnold also said he was unaware of the Florida investigation. His Nevada-based company is collecting signatures for four petitions, none apparently part of the investigation.

Both NVO and Arno screen petitions before turning them in to county elections offices, the company presidents said.

—      The News-Press staff writer Sarah Lundy contributed to this report.

Copyright 2002, The News-Press

 
Posted on Mon, Jun. 28, 2004

Panhandle election officials investigating petition forgery

Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - About 1,400 signatures appear to have been forged on at least three ballot petitions in the Panhandle, elections officials said Monday.
The ballots were found in Escambia, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties.
 
Santa Rosa County elections supervisor Doug Wilkes said the apparent fraud was discovered by chance, when an office worker helping to verify petitions spotted a signature she knew was forged - her own.
 
"It calls into jeopardy everything our democratic principles stand for," said John Molchan, the assistant state attorney in Milton who is handling the case.
 
Molchan said the investigation may take several weeks. Already it entails about 500 suspect petition signatures turned in to Santa Rosa County and an equal number to Escambia County. Nearly 400 suspected forgeries also have been reported in Okaloosa County.
 
Okaloosa elections officials said they found the same 132 names apparently repeatedly forged on petitions to repeal the high-speed bullettrain, cap trial attorneys fees and allow slot machines at horse tracks in South Florida.
 
Escambia County Supervisor of Elections Bonnie Jones said her staff noticed similar penmanship on a stack of petitions set aside for furtherscrutiny.
 
Jones said many of the signatures on the petition don't match the signatures of the people on file at the Escambia County Supervisor of Elections.
"After you check as many as we have, you can tell," Jones said. "We have to verify every one of the signatures."
 
Initiatives for constitutional amendments require 488,722 signatures by Aug. 3 to get on the November ballot. There are 10 petitions trying to get on the ballot.