In a release, Patrick offered a minimum of $25,000 per tip that leads to an arrest and final conviction, funded by his campaign coffers.
“In Texas we know voter fraud is real. In just the last 60 days, we have had three major arrests on voter fraud including a social worker who was arrested last week for allegedly registering almost 70 developmentally disabled adults to vote without their signature or consent,” he said.
The examples to which he is referring are a Gregg County Commissioner’s arrest for voter fraud conspiracy during the 2018 Democratic primary that he won by five votes; a Carrollton mayoral candidate’s bust while stuffing envelopes with fraudulent voter registration applications; and a Limestone County social worker who illegally registered “totally mentally incapacitated” individuals to vote.
President Donald Trump has alleged widespread voter fraud surrounding mail-in ballots since the November 3 election.
Patrick added, “President Trump is absolutely right to pursue every allegation of voter fraud and irregularities, just as Al Gore did in 2000. Every candidate for public office has this right. My goal is to ensure that, regardless of the outcome, every American has faith in our electoral process and our democracy.”
The lieutenant governor has served as the Texas chair of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has documented 86 individuals prosecuted for voter fraud since 2005. Texas’ Office of the Attorney General (OAG) documents 457 instances since its Elections Fraud Unit’s inception in 2004.
The difference between the two figures occurs as Heritage tracks individuals charged whereas the OAG tracks charges applied — of which multiple can be levied at a given perpetrator.
Pointing to states still counting their mail ballots and instances of poll watchers being haggled or outright prohibited from carrying out their duties, Patrick continued, “This lack of transparency has led many to believe that the final count is not accurate in states where the winner was determined be a very small percentage of the vote.”
The current margins in states still somewhat up in the air are generally too wide for a voter fraud effort to swing: Pennsylvania at 65,000 votes, Nevada at 36,000 votes, Wisconsin at 20,000 votes, Arizona at 15,000 votes, and Georgia at 13,000 votes.
However, when margins are smaller, like in the Gregg County instance, fraudulent voting practices can have an impact on the outcome.
Patrick’s offer extends to instances of voter fraud nationwide.
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Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson is a senior reporter for The Texan and an Ohio native who graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2017. He is an avid sports fan who most enjoys watching his favorite teams continue their title drought throughout his cognizant lifetime. In his free time, you may find Brad quoting Monty Python productions and trying to calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
