WHOOPS! False Signatures Discovered On ’08 Obama Primary Petitions
October 12, 2011
Would the Democratic National Committee Do That?
You can’t run for office if you can’t get enough signatures on a petition in support of your candidacy. Sometimes 500 signatures are necessary, sometimes thousands. Apparently, in preparation for next year’s presidential filings, petitions from 2008 have been reviewed. Those submitted in Indiana on behalf of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, feature the signature of Governor Joe Kernan and dozens of others, who say they never signed any such petition. In other words the petitions were falsified.
Obviously the GOP wants to get to the bottom of the apparent illegal filings, because filings for 2012 by both parties are just beginning. Particularly of concern would be the presidential filings for important states like New Hampshire, Iowa, and likely, Florida. So far, Indiana newspapers report that dozens to hundreds of signatures on the Primary petitions are unconfirmed forged. Fox News reports:
Joe Kernan, listed as Governor of Indiana at the time, told the South Bend Tribunethat neither the print
Forged Signatures On The Right, Authentic On The Left And Top
version of his name nor the signature that appear on the suspect document are anything like his own.
“Not at all,” Kernan, owner of the South Bend Silver Hawks minor league baseball team.
State Republican Party Chairman Eric Holcomb has called for a federal investigation into the dubious signatures, which the newspaper reported on Wednesday were approved in part with a rubber stamp.
The Tribune reports that the St. Joseph County voter registration office has a Democratic and Republican member who sign off on petition pages submitted for review. However, Republican Linda Silcott was out of the office on bereavement leave on the days the suspected fakes passed through her office.
Silcott’s stamped signature is used on the suspect pages while Democrat Pam Brunette signed off on the petitions in her own hand. The Tribune reported that Silcott’s deputy, Mary Carrol Ringler, has authority to use the stamp, but she does not recall if she did so, in part because the dates of the forged petitions coincide with her first two weeks in her post.
Follow @TKC_USIndiana Republicans plan to file a formal request for review with the Department of Justice by week’s end.
oops.!
So what else is new, the birth cert was false, so why not the petition to run?