I was wrong I

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I was wrong! I was wrong! There really is a voter fraud scandal in South Dakota — the scandal surrounding the increasingly suspicious affidavits used by the state and national Republican parties to help prove their charges of voter fraud.

As we noted yesterday, South Dakota’s Republican Attorney General Mark Barnett said that two of the three affidavits that alleged anything illegal turned out to be “either perjury or forgery.” The signer of the third affidavit could not be located.

Now it turns out, according to an article by David Kranz in today’s Argus Leader, that those affidavits were “pre-worded” by Republican lawyers involved in the RNC’s voter fraud investigation.

The chairwoman of the Tripp County Republicans apparently just went through the reservations with pre-written ‘I was in on voter fraud’ affidavits to see if she could get anyone to sign. Here’s the key passage …

Kim Vanneman, of Winner, said in an interview Monday that she traveled through the Rosebud reservation, including the town of Mission, asking people if they had any evidence of wrongdoing on Election Day, particularly of Democrats paying people to vote.

“I just went through the document, read it, asked them if it was correct, and if they wanted to sign it,” said Vanneman, a notary public who verified the statements.

Vanneman said she does not know the source of the original allegations, but word on the streets of Mission was that Democrats were paying $10 to those who would vote.

“I didn’t do the investigating,” she said. “Somebody else did that. They (the affidavits) came through work of different attorneys.”

For some reason, no one else involved in the Republican-backed investigation seems to have any idea where the affidavits came from either.

Other Republican lawyers involved in the effort — including the previously mentioned John Lauck — either don’t know or won’t say who was responsible for drawing up the “pre-worded” affidavits. They’re referring all questions to the Republican National Committee.

I think we may have a scandal on our hands after all.

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