This Might Fall Under The Heading Of Identity Theft
Rumors have it that the race for House District 81 in DeKalb County has now taken a turn into the land of Shockville. The race for the 81st is between Jill Chambers (R) and Eric Ponder (D).
Jason Anavitarte is a Doraville City Councilman who, very early in the general election, stated to both candidates that he would not endorse either candidate and was firmly committed to remaining neutral.
Imagine the shock on Anavitarte's face when he was confronted with a copy of a supposed endorsement letter signed by him that the Ponder campaign sent out to voters in the 81st District. Anavitarte had signed no such letter, making the Ponder campaign immediately subject to the charge by the Chambers' campaign of committing forgery for sending out false endorsement letters.
Anavitarte issued his own statement describing his disgust with the tactic taken by the Ponder campaign (that statement is in PDF format available for download up this page and to the right).
The Chambers' campaign sent out a press release (accessible above as the 2nd downloadable document) citing Georgia OCGA 16-9-1 with regards to the crime of forgery:
(a) A person commits the offense of forgery in the first degree when with intent to defraud he knowingly makes, alters, or possesses any writing in a fictitious name or in such manner that the writing as made or altered purports to have been made by another person, at another time, with different provisions, or by authority of one who did not give such authority and utters or delivers such writing.
(b) A person convicted of the offense of forgery in the first degree shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than ten years.
Since the Ponder campaign, at the very minimum, knowingly possessed a forged copy of Anavitarte's signature and used it in a fraudulent manner (i.e., using it to claim that Anavitarte had endorsed Ponder to the voters of the 81st when he hadn't made such endorsement), it is possible that each instance of a copy of that letter that was mailed (e.g., if 3500 letters went out) will be a separate count of forgery, Ponder may be looking at a possible prison time of, at minimum, 3500 years.
For more info on Jill Chambers' campaign, we recommend you visit her campaign Website.
For more info on Eric Ponder's campaign, we suggest you visit this website and do your own search for his qualifications to represent Georgians.
Speaking Of Fraud, Let's Turn To The Court of Appeals Race...
Rumors have it that conservative columnist Phil Kent is busy sending out letters and e-mails to Christian conservative mailing lists pumping-up the candidacy of Michael Sheffield and making false accusations against Debra Bernes.
What he is failing to do is openly disclose the fact that he is a paid consultant to the Sheffield campaign. We reviewed Sheffield's disclosures and uncovered the following payments made to Phil Kent:
02-17-2004 - $1000 (Source: PDF disclosure on SOS Website)
07-12-2004 - $1000 (Source: PDF disclosure on SOS Website)
09-11-2004 - $1000 (Source: Electronic disclosure on SOS Website)
PV Sez: Of course, if you're associated with a certain...errr...law firm in Gwinnett County (that we won't name here), you wouldn't think anything was wrong with this any more than you would think it wrong to put all of your eggs into a basket, first by backing Marcia Neaton for chairman, and then backing Wayne Hill for reelection.
However, if you're not involved in that law firm (whomever they may be), and you did want to look to someone who supposedly has credentials as a "conservative commentator" for advice on how they thought about a candidate, wouldn't YOU want that commentator to fully disclose his relationship with a particular candidate, especially if the relationship involved the commentator directly receiving payment to pump-up his candidacy?
Well, we know we would. But, we understand we're an anomaly in the political arena...
| PV Staff |