By Lucretia Hughes Klucken
Former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod appeared stunned during a CNN discussion after learning that Democratic officials were criminally convicted for forging signatures on petitions used to place Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on Indiana’s 2008 presidential primary ballot.
The moment unfolded on “Anderson Cooper 360” during a panel discussion about election integrity and President Donald Trump’s continued criticism of the 2020 election.
Axelrod was mocking Trump’s focus on the Arizona election results when Republican commentator Pete Seat, a former spokesman in the George W. Bush administration, offered an example from his home state of Indiana.
“I’ll give you an example of where it was determinative,” Seat said. “And that’s in my home state of Indiana, St. Joseph County.”
Seat then turned directly toward Axelrod.
“The gentleman you previously worked for, David Axelrod, Barack Obama got on the ballot because Democrats in that county submitted fraudulent ballot petition signatures,” Seat said.
Seat noted that several Democratic officials were convicted in connection with the scheme, including the former chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party.
“People, including the Democrat county chair, went to jail over that,” Seat said. “Barack Obama should not have been on the primary ballot in the state of Indiana.”
Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger attempted to separate petition fraud from fraud involving votes cast in an election.
“But that’s not a voting issue,” Kinzinger said.
Seat rejected that distinction.
“It is a voting issue because he was on the ballot and people could vote for him, and he shouldn’t have been,” Seat said.
Axelrod then asked how the fraud had been established.
“It was finally exposed two years later,” Seat said. “It went through the courts, and several people found themselves in jail. But that’s the problem. They didn’t find it before he was on the ballot. It took years after.”
The underlying fraud was real, although some details of Seat’s description require important context.
Indiana law required presidential candidates to submit at least 500 valid signatures from registered voters in each of the state’s nine congressional districts to qualify for the statewide primary ballot.
Obama’s campaign submitted 534 signatures from Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, which included St. Joseph County. Hillary Clinton’s campaign submitted 704.
Investigators later found that Democratic officials and voter-registration employees had copied names and signatures from legitimate petitions supporting a gubernatorial candidate onto petitions for Obama, Clinton and, according to court records, John Edwards.
A state police investigator identified nine Obama petitions and 13 Clinton petitions containing forged entries. Reports at the time estimated that more than 200 signatures were fraudulently copied across the petitions.
Owen “Butch” Morgan Jr., the former St. Joseph County Democratic chairman, was accused of directing the operation. Morgan was convicted of felony charges and sentenced to one year in prison, followed by community corrections.
Dustin Blythe, a former voter-registration employee and Democratic volunteer, was convicted after prosecutors presented evidence involving forged signatures on Obama’s petitions. An appeals court later reversed several of his convictions but allowed one forgery conviction to stand.
Pam Brunette and Beverly Shelton, who worked in the county voter-registration operation, pleaded guilty and received probation after cooperating with prosecutors.
In other words, this was not a rumor, conspiracy theory or social media allegation. People were charged, convicted and sentenced.
A judge involved in the case described the conduct as petition fraud rather than voter fraud because the crime involved ballot-access documents, not illegally cast votes.
That legal distinction matters, but it does not make the wrongdoing insignificant.
Petition fraud can determine which candidates appear on a ballot and which names voters are allowed to select. If a candidate reaches the ballot using forged signatures, the integrity of the election has been compromised before the first vote is ever cast.
However, the historical record does not establish that Obama, Clinton or their national campaigns knew about or directed the local forgery scheme.
It also cannot be stated with certainty that Obama would have been excluded from the ballot if the fraud had been discovered before the primary.
Because Obama submitted only 34 signatures more than the required 500 in the district, a successful challenge could have placed his eligibility in jeopardy. The special prosecutor later said the worst possible result might have been Obama’s removal from the Indiana primary ballot.
That is different from a court formally ruling that Obama was ineligible. No challenge was filed before the primary, and the petitions were certified.
That is precisely why the case remains important.
The people responsible for checking the documents were reportedly connected to the same local political operation responsible for producing the fraudulent signatures. The petitions moved through the system without being challenged, and the fraud was not publicly exposed until years later.
Hillary Clinton ultimately won the Indiana Democratic primary by roughly 14,000 votes, although Obama continued collecting delegates and went on to secure the Democratic nomination and the presidency.
The Indiana fraud did not determine the 2008 presidential election. It does demonstrate, however, that election-related fraud is not imaginary and that weaknesses in the system can remain undetected until long after an election is finished.
Americans are constantly told that election fraud is too rare to matter. When someone questions signature verification, voter-registration records, ballot access or chain-of-custody procedures, the concern is often dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
But four Democratic officials or workers were convicted or pleaded guilty in this case. One went to prison. Another retained a forgery conviction after appeal. The fraud involved petitions for two of the most powerful Democratic presidential candidates in the country.
The proper lesson is not that every election is fraudulent or that every losing candidate was cheated.
The lesson is that election fraud can happen, government officials can participate in it and safeguards can fail.
Every legal vote should count. Every candidate should follow the same rules. Every signature should be genuine, regardless of whether the petition belongs to a Democrat, Republican or independent.
Axelrod’s surprise illustrates another problem: Major election scandals can disappear from the national conversation when they are politically inconvenient.
Election integrity should never depend on which party benefits.
Obama and Clinton were not charged with wrongdoing in the Indiana case. The local Democratic officials who forged or approved the fraudulent petitions were held responsible.
Those facts can exist together.
Acknowledging documented fraud does not weaken democracy. Pretending it never happens does.
Lucretia Hughes Klucken is the host of Real News with Lucretia Hughes. Follow her reporting, broadcasts, books and mission at linktr.ee/lucretiahughes.
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