First person charged with voter fraud [in South Dakota]

KOTA-TV ^ | 10/18/2002 | Jack Siebold and Carl Agnelly

[jpthomas]

A KOTA Territory man is the first person to be charged with voter fraud this election.

Police say Lyle Nichols is charged with five counts of forgery of voter registration cards. Nichols is one of two brothers hired by the Native American Voter Registration Project.

They collected and submitted 226 registration cards. The Pennington County Auditor's office found that two of those newly registered voters were dead.

If convicted, Nichols could be sentenced to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each of the five felony counts.

Last week, accusations of voter registration fraud began to surface in several counties. Dead people had been registered, people were registered in counties other than where they live, and names were misspelled, signatures didn’t match.

Throughout the state, there are massive voter registration drives being conducted by both political parties, tribal governments and national organizations. Nichols currently is the only person charged.

There is another voter fraud investigation involving a woman paid by the South Dakota Democratic Party to register people. Becky Red-Earth Villeda says she is innocent, that the accusations against her are an attempt to stop the registration of Native Americans. Red-Earth Villeda was fired after discrepancies were found in two applications she collected.

[EODGUY]

"I only wish that the ACTUAL election results for the past 100 years would be revealed by some Miracle. I'm not sure the Democrats would have even 80% of their current seats."

Good point. Voter fraud has been an effective mainstay in the dem campaign playbook for decades.

[stands2reason]

I've always said I'll vote Republican until the day I die, after that, I'll probably vote Democrat.

[Teacher317]

The media is unashamedly on their side. Recall the Jim Jeffords news conference where he announced his important defection. There was a spontaneous standing ovation... however, the public was not invited to the announcement, since the room was only large enough for the media... that was the impartial press corps showing their joy at the switch.

[B-bone]

Throughout the state, there are massive voter registration drives being conducted by both political parties, tribal governments and national organizations. Nichols currently is the only person charged.

I agree both parties need to have voter registration drives. What I was trying to point out was that the way the story was written, the implication is that both voter registration drives were fraudulant but only the dems had been caught.

I don't accept this assumption that these drives are by definition fraudulant.