GOP Figure Had History of Voter Fraud Complaints in Two States

Looks like, when I suggested in my last post that the California Republican Party presumably didn't know that Mark Anthony Jacoby, owner of Young Political Majors, a company specializing in Republican and conservative oriented voter registration was involved in fraudulent signature gathering, I was apparently being somewhat premature.

Turns out the California GOP had a few reasons to suspect that Jacoby was trouble.

According to the San Jose Mercury News:

Mark Anthony Jacoby, who owns the firm Young Political Majors, is accused of registering himself to vote twice— in 2006 and in 2007— using the address of a childhood home in Los Angeles where he no longer lived.

The Secretary of State's Office said Jacoby used the address to meet a state requirement that signature-gatherers sign a declaration stating that they are either registered to vote in California or are eligible to do so.

But Jacoby had already been the subject of investigations in California and Massachusetts for "bait and switch" signature gathering:

This is not the first time that Jacoby has been embroiled in voter controversy.

Earlier this year, dozens of voters accused YPM, which had been hired by the California Republican Party, of tricking them into registering as Republicans. The voters said they thought they were signing a petition calling for stiffer penalties for child molesters.

In 2005, Massachusetts voters made a similar complaint.

They said a signature-gathering firm that acoby was working for as a subcontractor—Arno Political Consultants— duped them into signing an anti-gay marriage petition when they were told they were signing a ballot question about the sale of wine in grocery stores.

One signature-gatherer told a state hearing that Jacoby had personally trained her in the bait-and-switch tactic.