Republican staffers caught committing election fraud
Four staff members for former Representative Thaddeus McCotter were charged on Thursday with forgery and election fraud for creating fake nominating petitions in his 2012 campaign, Michigan’s top prosecutor said.
McCotter, a five-term congressman who ran a brief quixotic campaign for president, had so many signatures from his election petitions stricken that he was ruled off the ballot in June. He resigned from Congress in July.
The four former staffers “were engaged in a blatant attempt to commit forgery and election fraud,” Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said at a news conference in Detroit.
“They copied petitions, submitted petitions falsely signed by circulators and did cut-and-paste jobs that would make an elementary art teacher cringe,” Schuette said.
Don Yowchuang, 33, faces 17 charges, including 10 felony counts of election law forgery, a felony conspiracy count and six misdemeanors. He was accused of duplicating current petitions and electronically pasting signatures from past election cycles.
Paul Seewald, 47, was charged with one count of felony conspiring with Yowchuang and nine misdemeanor counts for signing petitions he did not circulate.