Fraud allegations as early voting begins tomorrow in St. Johns County

As early voting gets underway in St. Johns County, allegations of fraud are emerging.

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The St. Johns County Republican Party claims someone distributed false endorsements ahead of the August primary.

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“It’s a very close imitation, but it is fraudulent,” said Chairman Denver Cook. “When you’re talking about election interference and election fraud, I don’t know how it could be any worse than this.”

The fake email showed a list of candidates who were the opposite of those actually supported by the St. Johns GOP. Chairman Denver Cook said he has received more than a dozen calls about the fake email, adding that he has never seen anything like it before.

“That’s so frustrating and it makes me concerned about the behavior when you’re talking about voter intimidation, voter fraud and the level of anger that’s been created,” he said.

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Sean Freeder, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Florida, says something like this isn’t cheap to pull off and the goal is to create confusion.

“If you can confuse 5 percent of voters in these neck-and-neck races, that’s potentially a big win. And as it gets easier and easier to produce these kinds of mail pieces in different races, you’re likely to see more and more of this,” he said.

Cook believes it is detrimental to the integrity of the election.

“To claim the day before early voting starts, with this level of fraud, that they are in fact the party of the county, simply goes beyond the bounds of reasonableness and acceptability and may not only be out-of-state voter fraud at the federal level, but it may be mail fraud as well,” he said.

Cook said FDLE is aware and will file charges if they find out who did this.

Below is a statement from Florida Republican Party Chairman Evan Power:

“The Republican Party of Florida and the St. Johns County Republican Party are the only organizations qualified to officially speak on behalf of our party in St. Johns County. We take this matter very seriously and are investigating it. No voter in Florida should be misled by faceless, fake groups pretending to speak on behalf of the GOP.”

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