A Columbiana County, Ohio, woman is headed to jail after pleading guilty to multiple counts of voter registration fraud while working for a leftist community organizing group.
Rebecca Hammonds, 34, accepted a guilty plea on 14 counts of voter registration fraud this week after originally facing a total of 35, according to the Salem News. Between September and October 2015, Hammonds worked as a paid canvasser for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. Local officials to include the sheriff’s department saw how applications included inaccuracies on the forms. Among her submitted documents, five confirmed deceased residents were offered up for new registrations.
During trial, the canvasser explained her actions by claiming she would lose her job if she did not produce. Hammonds’ public defender, Jennifer Gorby, said her actions were based on a “lack of judgment” borne out of “laziness”–but she was not operating under a quota system.
During sentencing, an offer of probation was floated between the State and Hammonds, but Judge C. Ashley Pike entered a 180-day jail term.
“I just can’t overlook this. You attempted to violate the integrity of our election process in the county,” Pike said.
The Ohio Organizing Collaborative operates in a variety of policy areas to include criminal, economic, and environmental “justice.” During the time of Hammonds’ forgeries, the OOC was taking public stances against hydraulic fracturing activity occurring throughout the state and spearheaded and effort known as the Communities United for Responsible Energy. A promotional document for the program explained that the group hoped to “connect racial, social and economic justice to environmental issues.”
Hammonds is not an isolated incident in Ohio. Prior to the 2016 presidential primary, Breitbart Texas reported on how an officially-verified study of Cuyahoga and Franklin Counties’ voter rolls contained more than a thousand voter duplications—many of which originated from paid voter registration canvassers by groups like Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Organizing for America, The Strategy Network, and Field Works.
Ohio’s registration rules and voting laws were also subject to multiple lawsuits from left-wing organizations in the run-up to the 2016 Election. The ACLU and others set out to challenge voter roll maintenance standards previously secured by Judicial Watch while others attacked the Buckeye State’s early voting rules in an effort to lengthen the period. Aided by the Public Interest Legal Foundation and others, the State of Ohio eventually succeeded in demonstrating faults in the politically-charged courtroom attacks.
For the week of March 6, 2017, Rebecca Hammonds joins two others convicted or sentenced for voting-related crimes. According to KCUR, a western Kansan accepted a plea agreement Thursday for casting multiple ballots across state lines. Separately, Breitbart Texas reported on the conviction of Noe Abdon Olvera, a U.S. Postal Service delivery man who accepted bribes from Democrat political operatives in exchange for information indicating where and when absentee ballots would be delivered. The report noted where a former compatriot claimed Olvera would personally offer help in obtaining “citizenship papers” if a voter supported his candidate.
Judge Pike was not very forgiving when reading Hammonds’ sentence.
“You made a mockery of our system … If 180 days doesn’t teach you a lesson, nothing will,” Pike added.
Logan Churchwell is a founding editor of the Breitbart Texas team. You can follow him on Twitter @LCChurchwell. He also serves as the communications director for the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
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