Secretary of state denies voter fraud claims

HELENA — Secretary of State Corey Stapleton said in a letter read by his chief of staff to a legislative committee Thursday that he never made any allegations of 360 cases of voter fraud in the May 25 special election and that media reports were incorrect.



“I made no such statement,” Stapleton said in the Sept. 14 letter to Sen. Sue Malek, chair of the State Administration and Veterans Affairs Interim Committee. And he added he would “ask you to correct the public record to the extent that you can.”



Malek had invited Stapleton to the meeting saying she wanted him to come and provide more information on the “360 cases of voter fraud” that he discussed at SAVA’s July 20 meeting.



Christi Jacobsen, Stapleton’s chief of staff, read Stapleton’s denial of the claims in his letter to SAVA members.



“Never in the SAVA committee, nor to AP, did I make any allegations did I make any allegations of voter fraud,” he wrote.



However, during the July 20 SAVA meeting, Stapleton did say there were some problems.

“In the special election over 300 signatures were illegal statewide,” he told SAVA members.



Jacobsen declined to differentiate to reporters the difference between “illegal” signatures and voter fraud.



Malek, D-Missoula, said she was “glad to hear” that Stapleton’s “accusations were never made or withdrawn.”



“I do not want Montanans to think fraud is going on in their communities,” she said.



But her comments got some pushback from a Republican on the committee.



Sen. Doug Kary, R-Billings, asked Malek if she was going to apologize to Stapleton, a Republican who has been in office since January.



Malek didn’t. She said she saw the article in the newspaper and had expected Stapleton to make a clarification earlier.



The July 20 Associated Press story did appear in the Great Falls Tribune. Stapleton said in his letter that he did ask for a correction from Associated Press and Lee Newspapers.



“The problem is, of course, it becomes difficult for media to walk back stories of widespread voter fraud, once they become the foundation of public conversation,” he wrote.



Darrell Ehrlick, Billings Gazette editor, said Stapleton never contacted an editor at The Gazette about any reporting of alleged voter fraud after the stories ran.



“The Gazette also has no record of any dispute of the facts from anyone in that office after the stories were published,” he said. “We stand by our reporting and have not issued a correction on this topic.”



The Associated Press was not able to provide a statement as of press time.



Malek wrote an Aug. 3 letter to Stapleton that the SAVA committee needed more information and asked he provide staff with the name of the county in which the fraud took place, number of fraudulent cases per county and what legal action has been taken by the county.



Officials said there were two cases of suspected voter fraud out of the 383,301 cast in the May 25 special election won by U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte.

This story contains information from the Associated Press.