The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has once again found itself in the news regarding election security after a Philadelphia Democratic consultant allegedly broke the law.
The consultant, Rasheen Crews, was arrested Wednesday and charged with forging ballot signatures to get his clients on the ballot.
According to the Daily Caller, Crews allegedly committed these crimes back in 2019 during the Philadelphia primary races.
Pennsylvania Attorney General and Governor-elect Josh Shapiro released a statement about the arrest giving details about the crimes and expressing the importance of election integrity.
“In advance of the 2023 municipal elections, this arrest is an important reminder that interfering with the integrity of our elections is a serious crime,” Shapiro said.
“By soliciting and organizing the wide-scale forgery of signatures, the defendant undermined the democratic process and Philadelphians’ right to a free and fair election. My office is dedicated to upholding the integrity of the election process across the Commonwealth, to ensure everyone can participate in Pennsylvania’s future.”
Upon investigation, authorities found that several Democratic candidates hired Crews to get them on the ballot, as reported by the Daily Caller.
Ballot access is earned by gaining a certain number of signatures from constituents and once these signatures are procured, they are notarized and handed in.
Authorities allegedly found that Crews recruited several individuals to forge the names and addresses at a local hotel room.
More than 1,000 of these signatures were found to be duplicated, with “many names and addresses were found repeated on various petition pages,” according to the Daily Caller.
One of Crews’ clients, Jason Rubin, informed authorities that he hired the consultant to the tune of $2,500.
Rubin alleges that he gave Crews the signatures he had acquired the old-fashioned way already notarized, but later noticed that “two of the pages had names added to the petitions after the pages were notarized and given to Crews by Rubin.”
Many of the candidates that hired Crews dropped out after the signature inconsistencies became apparent.
These details come from the police affidavit.
Crews has been charged with criminal solicitation to commit forgery and theft by failure to make required disposition, according to the AG’s office.
His case is being prosecuted by the senior deputy attorney general.
