Madeline Buckley

madeline.buckley@indystar.com

Employees of a voter registration agency told police they turned in some falsified voter registration forms due to pressure from supervisors to meet a quota for registering Indiana voters, according to a search warrant unsealed Monday.

Canvassers working on behalf of the Indiana Voter Registration Project may have submitted hundreds of fabricated, incorrect or incomplete voter registration forms in counties across the state, the warrant alleges. Police say they found registrations for people who were already registered and said they did not authorize anyone from the group to re-register them, as well as registrations with incorrect birth dates, names and signatures that did not match previous registrations.

The search warrant offers details into the voter fraud investigation that sparked controversy and concern in the weeks leading up Election Day. The investigation conducted by the Indiana State Police spurred Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson to publicly say in October that incorrect voter registration forms that were submitted may constitute voter fraud. That revelation built on fears of a rigged election stoked by President-elect Donald Trump in the final weeks of his campaign.

Indiana Democrats, though, accused Lawson of speaking out prematurely, inflaming partisan fears. The Indiana Voter Registration Project is an offshoot of Patriot Majority USA, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that in part seeks to register voters in historically under-represented areas. Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry later made a statement urging police to stop discussing the investigation publicly, called accusations of voter fraud "premature" and asked third parties to stop making “reckless assertions” of voter suppression and intimidation.

Though no charges have been filed against any workers or officials at Patriot USA, the search warrant authorized Indiana State Police detectives to search the Indiana office in the 2400 block of North Meridian Street and seize computers and documents. The warrant outlines the detectives' case against the voter group and asks a judge to find probable cause for a search.

The truth behind voter fraud in Indiana

Patriot Majority USA spokesman Bill Buck said in a statement that the group paid employees by a day's work, not by form. He said in the statement that employees who turned in faulty registration forms were not asked back.

“The professionalism of the Indiana Voter Registration Project is further proven by the fact that most of the canvassers mentioned in these warrants were fired, let go, not called back or quit before the State Police became involved in this matter," the statement read. "In addition, most of the non-verified applications mentioned in the warrants were flagged as incomplete or inaccurate by the Project itself, as part of its quality-control process, in order to ensure that no ineligible individual or application made its way onto the Voter File."

In September, officials of the Marion County Board of Voter Registration told police the group submitted more than 27,000 voter applications, the warrant says. The board was "suspicious" of the group, so they sent an attorney to the group's headquarters to take photographs.

The Marion County Voter Registration Office also flagged 570 suspect voter registration applications and handed them over to police, the warrant says.

Police began reviewing registrations submitted by the Indiana Voter Registration Project and found incomplete applications, as well as applications for people who were already registered to vote, the warrant says.

Detectives interviewed employees, who, according to the warrant, said they were pressured to register at least 10 voters during a shift to be able to keep working. The employees told police they were generally paid $75 for about five hours of canvassing in often low-income neighborhoods. One employee told police she completed voter registration forms — without the potential voter's permission — to meet the quota, the warrant says.

Another employee told police she took credit for registering 10 to 15 voters she did not actually speak to, the warrant says.

Indiana State Police detectives raided the headquarters on Oct. 4 and seized documents, hard drives and laptops.

Experts have said that voter registration fraud doesn't necessarily translate into fraud at the polls.

"There’s no question some amount of voter registration fraud happens," Michael Pitts, a law professor and dean's fellow at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, told IndyStar in October. "It generally seems to be related to people being paid to collect registration forms. If you get paid to generate registration forms, you’re incentivized to make them up. That is certainly fraud.

"But there isn’t much evidence that voter registration fraud translates into actual people coming to the polls under a false identity. And that’s a distinction that needs to be drawn. Fake registration forms happen, but whether that actually translates into a fraudulent vote is a totally separate question."

IndyStar reporter Vic Ryckaert contributed to this story.

Call IndyStar reporter Madeline Buckley at (317) 444-6083. Follow her on Twitter: @Mabuckley88.

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