Indictments for Petition Fraudsters with Connections to Missouri Ballot Initiatives

Yesterday came word from Oklahoma that indictments have been handed down against Susan Johnson and Paul Jacob for fraud related to initiative petition signature gathering in connection with that state's TABOR initiative efforts in 2006.  Jacob and Johnson (at left, handcuffed to one another) were key figures in several Missouri initiative efforts last year as well.  From the Tulsa World:

A multicounty grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday in Oklahoma County District Court names three key figures in the failed effort to put a taxpayer bill of rights on state ballots last year. ...

Susan Johnson of Michigan, president of National Voter Outreach, and Paul Jacob of Virginia, of Citizens in Charge, were charged with conspiracy to defraud the state.

FiredUp! Missouri has been onto the fraudulent antics of Johnson and Jacob for some time.  Last spring, several posts carefully laid out the scam that Johnson and Jacob had perpetrated in trying to foist their TABOR initiative on voters here in Missouri.  That's the same initiative that has led to their indictment in Oklahoma. A look back to June 2006:

If Tuohey is the shiny package that the TABOR initiative came wrapped in, Paul Jacob is the brain and guts tucked away inside. Jacob, a national libertarian operative and pundit for conservative outlets like TownHall.org, sits at the controls of the Missouri TABOR initiative by virtue of his position at a national organization called Americans for Limited Government. He has run these ballot campaigns before in other states. ...

One possible reason for why NVO is targeted by fraud investigations and regularly submits petitions with abnormally high rates of invalid signatures is that they apparently exercise very little discretion with regard to hiring subcontractors for their campaigns:

National Voter Outreach, owned by Susan Johnson, hired a subcontractor in southeastern Michigan to gather signatures for the Stop Overspending Michigan campaign. Upon an internal review of some of the signatures, the company found some of the subcontractors turned in fraudulent signatures, including those of deceased individuals, according to the police report.

The fraud was noticed out of the Flint office, Johnson said. Some people on the circulating crews “turned in several thousand forged signatures” while the people managing the crew went to Missouri to work on another drive.

A year and a half ago, FiredUp! Missouri was pointing to rampant fraud being committed by Johnson and Jacob in this state.  Now they are on their way up the river for fraud committed at the same time, working on the same initiative in a neighboring state.  What are the odds that the TABOR operation run by Johnson and Jacob in Missouri was fraud free?

And that's not all.  Johnson and Jacob are connected to several other GOP-connected ballot operations in Missouri.

Notably, Johnson's National Voter Outreach petition collection outfit is the firm that proponents of Missouri's anti-stem cell research ballot initiative have planned to use to gather signatures for their 2008 attempt to roll back 2006's constitutional amendment protecting embryonic research.  Jeff Roe --the consultant responsible for managing the anti-cures petition effort-- is linked to Johnson and National Voter Outreach by virtue of his relationship with Paul Jacob, who has consistently used the firm in petition efforts around the country.

Eagle-eyed observers will remember that Roe and Jacob hooked up in 2006 on another devious project --the dishonest campaign to "take a scalp" by running false ads against Cole County Circuit judge Tom Brown during his re-election.

We Missourians have had a front row seat for the fraudulent show out of which Johnson and Jacob have made a career.  Luckily, these fraudsters will now be off the streets for good.  But a word to the wise: the devious and illegal tactics used by GOP operatives and front groups will not disappear because of the indictments of Susan Johnson and Paul Jacob.  Other scumbags will simply use the opportunity to fill the right-wing niche left open by their disappearance from the Missouri scene. 

There will be more ballot initiatives in 2008, with petitions circulated by "professional" out of state firms.  If we learn no other lesson from Johnson and Jacob, we should take it as an inducement to treat these outfits with the skepticism they deserve, right from the outset. 

Tim Asher and Ward Connerly, consider yourselves on notice.