Months after it was opened, the ballot fraud investigation of former Rep. Scott Taylor’s (R-VA) unsuccessful reelection campaign continues, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Thursday.
“The investigation is continuing. I have no further comment,” Roanoke Commonwealth’s Attorney Don Caldwell, the special prosecutor appointed to look into the matter, told the paper.
A state judge appointed Caldwell in August after several voters in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District said their names and signatures had mysteriously appeared on petition sheets to get an independent congressional candidate on the ballot without their permission. The petition sheets included the signatures of a dead man.
The people who collected those fraudulent signatures were paid staffers on Taylor’s campaign. Their aim was to dilute the vote share of Taylor’s Democratic challenger, now-freshman Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA).
TPM reported exclusively that Taylor personally called the first person to accuse his campaign of forgery, local Democratic volunteer Lindsey Terry, and pressured her to take back her allegations.
Terry refused. Two weeks later, in September, she told state investigators about the call.
Democrats sued, successfully, to get the independent candidate’s name off of the ballot after dozens of signatures were identified as inauthentic. A judge wrote that Taylor’s staffers collected the signatures “with the intent to defraud the Commonwealth and its election officials.”
