Former Montana Secretary of State: “Sec. Stapleton Should Disqualify Green Party Sham”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, April 10, 2020
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Former Montana Secretary of State: “Sec. Stapleton Should Disqualify Green Party Sham”
“This fraudulent conduct — intentionally designed to deceive Montana voters and meddle in our democratic process — is beneath Montana”
Helena, MT – Former Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch is calling on Corey Stapleton to disqualify the fraudulent effort that qualified the Green Party for the Montana ballot. The Montana Republican Party has admitted to funding the operation that deceived thousands of Montanans in an effort to tamper with our elections.
Bozeman Chronicle: Sec. Stapleton should disqualify Green Party sham
By: Linda McCulloch
“I was alarmed by the recent revelations that out-of-state signature gatherers employed by the same organization hired to qualify the Green Party for the ballot in 2018 were once again collecting signatures for the Green Party, despite the Montana Green Party’s unequivocal public condemnation of the effort.”
“On March 6, the Secretary of State certified the Green Party to be on the ballot, despite the funding source behind the campaign being a mystery and the funder having clearly violated state law in the course of acquiring the certification.”
“Recently, the mystery of the Green Party signatures was finally solved when it was reported that the Montana GOP had been bankrolling the covert operation all along, spending $100,000 to finance the signature gathering. Republicans led the deception that put petition gatherers in the parking lots of grocery stores and post offices wearing buttons and insignia that implied they were Green Party members.”
“This fraudulent conduct — intentionally designed to deceive Montana voters and meddle in our democratic process — is beneath Montana, and the MTGOP knows it. Rather than mount their operation in public, the Montana Republican Party launched their plan under the auspices of a shell group named to sound like a Green Party affiliated organization. The MTGOP used this organization to funnel money to the petitioners firm, obscuring the relationship between the party and the signature gathering campaign. To boot, the Republicans conveniently misfiled their shell group with the Office of Political Practices, an obviously deliberate attempt to avoid detection.”
“Now that the Green Party ballot certification process has been revealed as a MTGOP conspiracy to tamper with votes and election outcomes, Secretary of State Stapleton must act swiftly to disqualify the effort, condemned by the Montana Green Party as ‘Republican and conservative efforts’ to put forward ‘false’ candidates.”
“Democratic and Republican voters lose when political parties embrace such brazen political subterfuge. Our democracy depends on free and fair elections, an ideal that is actively undermined by this behavior. This style of politics is unacceptable in Montana, no matter your party affiliation or political views.”
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