Indiana group charged with filing fake voter registration applications

The Marion County, Ind., prosecutor on Friday charged a group and 12 individuals with filing fraudulent voter registration forms in Marion and St. Joseph counties before last year’s elections.

Prosecutor Terry Curry, a Democrat, stressed that no voter fraud occurred.

Rather, a group called the Indiana Voter Registration Project, linked to Democrats and focused on mobilizing black voters, was paying people to register voters. Those individuals, pressured to meet daily quotas in order to receive pay, filed fraudulent forms, prosecutors said.

All of the fraudulent forms were filed in Marion County except for those filed by one of the defendants, Glynn Parrish, 52, of Hammond, Ind., who filed registrations in St. Joseph County, the charges allege.

Frank Fotia, Republican member of the St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office, told investigators that at least 28 of the registration applications dropped off by Parrish were fraudulent.

The office had compared the applications to voter registry records and learned that some contained false dates of birth, false Social Security numbers, and that a dead person’s name and identifying information had been used on one of them, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Parrish told investigators that IVRP had paid him $75 a day to register voters, and that he recruited people mostly at gas stations in Lake and St. Joseph counties. But Parrish said he had to meet a daily quota in order to be called back to work the following day, and the quota was “impossible.” So he ultimately went to a library and looked up names in a phone book, and then made up dates of birth and Social Security numbers on the applications.

Like the other 11 individuals, Parrish faces charges of procuring or submission of false, fictitious or fraudulent voter registration application; and perjury, both Level 6 felonies.

Curry called the group’s practice of setting daily quotas for canvassers “a very bad, ill-advised business practice.”

The Indiana Voter Registration Project’s effort to register primarily black voters was overseen by Patriot Majority USA, which has ties to the Democratic Party, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and former President Bill Clinton.

Patriot Majority has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes.

State Police began investigating the group in August after a clerk in Hendricks County near Indianapolis flagged about a dozen registration forms that had missing or suspicious information.

That investigation expanded to 56 counties where Patriot Majority said it had collected about 45,000 voter registration applications before last November’s election.