Today, the State Board of Elections will consider whether or not the Green Party will be on the ballot in November. Back in May, the Board denied the Party’s attempt to secure the necessary signatures because of thousands of fraudulent petitions and signatures. Now, the Green Party is suing to get on the ballot and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has filed an amicus brief on their behalf. 

This weekend, the AP wrote an article accusing Democrats of using strong-arm tactics to keep the Green Party off the ballot since Green Party candidates are likely to siphon off votes from Democrats. The party lives in fear of a repeat of 2000 when the Greens took enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida to throw the election to George Bush, albeit with a little help from the Supreme Court. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee says that it reached out to people to make sure they actually signed the petition or weren’t misled about what it did. The story relies on “more than a dozen” people who complained about having their signatures questioned. Far more than that told Board of Elections investigators that they never signed the petition at all or were misled about what it did.

Of the more than 22,000 signatures submitted, about a third were rejected. Whole petition pages were clearly written and signed by the same person. Dead people signed the petition. Numerous people came forward to say that they did not sign the petition or were misled about what they were signing. The Democratic Party didn’t call this fraud to the attention of State Board of Elections; county election boards did. 

In addition, the people the Green Party hired to collect signatures have a long history of fraud. They are not Green Party volunteers or true believers. They’re mercenaries who will work for anybody. In Michigan, the same company that the Green Party hired, First Choice Contracting, was responsible for five GOP candidates being kicked off of the ballot because of petition fraud. That alone should have been enough to send up red flags.

It’s also a bit rich that the NRSC is filing an amicus brief implying that the Democrats are intimidating people. In June, Politico released video recordings of Republicans discussing “a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts.” So the party that is building a systemic operation to challenge and disqualify votes is complaining about Democrats investigating what looks a lot like a systematic fraudulent signature collecting operation. 

North Carolina is the state where the most blatant election fraud operation in modern history took place. And it happened with people collecting and submitting fraudulent votes. If the State Board of Elections is wary of fraudulent petitions, forgive them. Up to seven thousand fraudulent signatures and hundreds of bogus petition pages are enough to cast doubt on the validity of the Green Party effort. The support of the NRSC makes it stink to high heaven.