This week the Shasta County District Attorney’s office has forwarded to the California Secretary of State’s Office its findings into allegations of fraud related to signature gathering on the “Notice of Intent” for each Supervisor that “Recall Shasta” is targeting for a recall.
Earlier reporting on this situation demonstrated repeated examples of seemingly identical handwriting in the signatures used to advance the recall petitions. If proven, this would be a clear violation of state Elections Code, and a potential crime for anyone who deliberately falsified or forged a voter’s signature.
This earlier reporting clarified two important matters related to the “Recall Shasta” campaign:
1. It strongly appears that the reluctance of “Recall Shasta” to include actual signatures of its proponents in their “proof of publication” may be related to the plain fact that many of those signatures are highly suspicious and potentially fraudulent.
2. If Shasta’s District Attorney found evidence of wrongdoing in this process, the Secretary of State should investigate these issues fully, to ensure Shasta voters are aware as they are being presented with petitions that stem from potentially illegal acts.
The “Recall Shasta” effort was originally rejected in April for the exact fact that signatures were not included in the required public “Proof of Publication” advertisement. The second attempt by “Recall Shasta”, which merely noted “/s/” to indicate that each proponent had signed a petition. Voters were unable to see these signatures for themselves, and we now see why.
Copies of the paperwork with the suspicious signatures can be seen in the recent article “Recall Petition Forms Deemed OK, Yet Sketchy Signatures Abound: See For Yourself.”
