CT Blue

A few weeks ago I wrote a few posts (here and here) about David Preka, a Republican candidate for town council here in Groton who lacked a fairly basic requirement for the office: he didn’t live here. The local Republican Party, I have come to understand, was fully aware of this minor little issue when he was nominated, but chose to ignore it for reasons of their own. Their response to the public disclosure of their illegal behavior was strikingly reminiscent of the defenders of a certain stable genius: they blamed the whistleblower, whoever he or she might have been.

It looks like Mr. Preka has a companion in crime at a much higher level:

U.S. Rep. Steve Watkins’ decision to sign a Kansas voter registration form and two other election documents that asserted his residential address was a UPS Store in Topeka could constitute felony voter fraud under federal law and election perjury under state statute, officials said Tuesday.

Shawnee County records show the first-term Republican listed his official residence as 6021 S.W. 29th St. in Topeka, which corresponds to a UPS Store, when he signed a form to change his residency for voter registration purposes in August, signed an application for a mail-in ballot in October and signed a document to complete advance voting for the November election.

It isn’t clear where the congressman physically resided in Kansas after August nor what Topeka precinct he was legally qualified to be part of when voting in November. By asserting his place of residence to be the UPS Store, Watkins left the Topeka City Council’s 5th District for the city council’s 8th District. He then cast a November ballot in an 8th District contest decided by 13 votes.

Jim Joice, Watkins’ chief of staff, said questions about the residency issue posed by The Topeka Capital-Journal led to a staff review of the congressman’s voter registration. He said Watkins mistakenly portrayed his residence to be the UPS building.

No word in the linked article about whether Watkins has gotten around to blaming the Democrats for his criminal behavior. I did get a kick out of his chief of staff’s assertion that his boss “ mistakenly portrayed his residence to be the UPS building”. This requires us to believe that a man with sufficient brains to be a Republican Congressman (okay, I know, that’s in the nature of an oxymoron, but still) doesn’t know his own address. I can’t recall much about my pre-K childhood, but I still remember the address of the house I lived in until I was 6. Watkins apparently wants us to believe that he simply made a mistake about his own address. It would take an entirely Republican and exclusively Fox watching jury (maybe not hard to get in Kansas) to believe this was not intentional fraud.

The article goes on to point out the potential federal sanctions that might await the Congressman:

The penalty in federal law could be five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for people guilty of willfully giving false information about an address when establishing eligibility for registration.

If that’s true it might give Mr. Preka pause as well, since he voted in three federal elections using his phony address.

Again, let us make note of the fact that Republicans are always accusing others of the crimes in which only they engage, voter fraud being a prime example.