Four congressional staffers of former Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), who resigned from Congress on July 6, will face criminal felony charges for voter and election fraud in Michigan. The charges were announced by Michigan’s Attorney General today.
The election fraud, described as “blatant,” includes forgery and faking petition signatures including using old signatures from past election forms. The voting fraud listed in the indictment report would appear to be the type of criminal activity that various voter ID laws recently passed would not have prevented.
“The approach taken was disgraceful,” said Michigan’s Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette, who announced the charges today. According to a report by the Attorney General’s office, McCotter’s staff had “completely lost its moral compass.”
Schuette said the staffers undertook forgery and election fraud and executed, “cut and paste jobs that would make an elementary school teacher cringe.”
“The district got stiffed. People got stiffed,” Attorney General Schuette said.
“Public service is not a game. This is not frat boys go to Washington. This is not a garage band in D.C. … It’s not some little fun exercise that you go to Washington or Lansing and it’s frat boy or ‘Animal House’ goes to the Capitol,” Schuette told reporters today.
The Detroit Free Press, reports that McCotter’s staff “pasted signatures from 2006 onto petitions for this year’s election.” Michigan’s 11th district where the election fraud took place is one of the wealthiest in Michigan with an average income of $59,000.
Republican legislatures across the country, such as Texas, Florida, and Ohio, have passed voter ID laws and shortened early voting saying that fraud was a problem. Widespread cases of voter fraud have yet to be uncovered.