Dan Patrick, a millionaire Texas businessman and politician, reacted to the 2020 “stolen” election by offering bounties for turning in election thieves.
He promised (here), “Anyone who provides information that leads to an arrest and final conviction of voter fraud will be paid a minimum of $25,000.”
He explained he was doing it “to incentivize, encourage and reward people to come forward and report voter fraud.” In other words, catch election thieves.
Someone took him up on it, and Patrick kept his promise. (Read story on CNN here.)
This month, he paid 25 grand (from campaign cash, not his own pocket) to Erik Frank, a Pennsylvania pollworker, for turning in Ralph Holloway Thurman (photo), 72, who after voting under his own name tried to vote again by impersonating his son. Thurman got probation.
Thurman is a Republican. His son, whose vote he tried to steal, is a Democrat. So is Frank.
According to the Dallas Morning News (here), Frank said, “It’s my belief that they were trying to get cases of Democrats doing voter fraud. And that just wasn’t the case. This kind of blew up in their face.” But he also told CNN that he turned Thurman in “because it’s just the right thing to do. And I would have reported Thurman if he was a Republican or a Democrat.”
Not missing a beat, Thurman tried to blame his illegal voting on masks and plexiglass barriers set up to protect election workers, according the Philadelphia Inquirer (here). That’s baloney. He asked if he could vote for his son, was told he couldn’t, left the polling place, and returned in disguise. He knew what he was doing, and knew he wasn’t allowed to do it.
Experts say voting fraud is extraordinarily rare. And when it does happen, the perpetrators are Republicans. (This guy is a prize specimen.) So, it seems to me, Patrick’s bounty scheme was bound to backfire. And it did.