Statement on Possible Voter Fraud Video of Jim Moran’s Field Director
The 8th Congressional District of Virginia Republican Committee denounced the Jim Moran campaign today after a video was released showing Pat Moran, the son of 8th District Rep. Jim Moran and a paid campaign staffer, appearing to advise and encourage a man posing as a Democratic operative on how to commit voter fraud.
The video, recorded on October 8th and released yesterday by Project Veritas, shows Pat Moran apparently providing guidance to an undercover reporter on how to cast illegal votes for 100 inactive voters. The younger Moran appears to advise the reporter on how to vote in the name of others by forging utility bills, and to identify citizens not planning to vote by impersonating a pollster and asking citizens if they plan to vote. While it is not clear if any laws were broken, it appears that Pat Moran provided suggestions on how to vote fraudulently in the names of 100 voters.
“Voter fraud is a reprehensible act that denies citizens one of their most basic democratic rights – the right to vote,” said 8th District Republican Chairman Mike Ginsberg. “That a Democratic campaign official and the son of a Democratic congressman would appear to be advising someone on how to vote fraudulently is truly breathtaking. The appropriate response to the undercover reporter would have been to say in no uncertain terms that voter fraud is illegal, and to walk away,” Ginsberg said.
Just yesterday, Moran had an op-ed piece in the Falls Church News-Press in which he stated that “[v]oting is at the core of our democratic principles. When that right is violated, our democracy is violated.” The piece is available here.
“I rarely find myself in agreement with Jim Moran, but his statement that violations of the right to vote are a violation of our democracy could not be more correct,” Ginsberg said. “The fact that a sitting Democratic congressman’s own son may have suggested schemes to engage in voter fraud shows that the time has come for robust voter ID laws that cannot be easily evaded.”
Ginsberg concluded, “Unfortunately, this sort of behavior is nothing new for Jim Moran. He has a long history of ethics problems stretching all the way back to when he was a city councilman in Alexandria in the 1980s. It is people like Jim Moran who cause the American public to hold such disdain for Congress. This is the last straw. Jim Moran needs to look at the havoc his tenure has wrought on the 8th District and the American people, and decide to put restoring American trust in Congress above his personal ambition. It is high time for Jim Moran to resign.”
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